• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, January 15, 2024

Here come the Emmy Awards, 119 days late.

Originally scheduled for last September 18, “The 75th Emmy Awards” were thrown off course just like everything else last year by the writers’ strike (ended September 27) and the actors’ strike (ended November 9).

And so, here we are -- the 2023 Emmys are to be held in 2024 in the winter -- Monday, January 15, Martin Luther King Day. 

In the annual rotation between the four broadcast networks, it is Fox’s turn this year to air them. Anthony Anderson, currently seen in the Fox game show “We Are Family,” is the host.

The 2023 Emmy nominations were announced last July 12, so everyone can be forgiven for forgetting the whole thing. 

For that matter, one wonders how many in the mob of potential Emmy viewers are even aware the Emmys are on this week.

Every year, there is a diminishing number of these people anyway. The 2022 Emmys drew an estimated total audience of 5.92 million, down from 7.83 million in 2021.

These numbers are low, but all major awards shows are in decline in much the same way. It’s ironic, isn’t it? Everyone watches TV, it is said, but apparently, the vast majority of them don’t care one way or the other who wins Emmys.

As pointed out in TV Blogs of seasons past, the annual Emmy telecast on one of the broadcast networks effectively gives three hours of prime-time promotion to all the platforms that have for years hastened the erosion of network audiences.

Fox, the network of this year’s Emmy show, received a total of 11 Emmy nominations; ABC, 28; NBC, 27; and CBS, 20 -- a total of 86 nominations for network television.

By contrast, the total nominations for the top streaming services adds up to 417 by my count -- HBO Max, 127; Netflix, 103; Apple TV+, 48; Hulu, 42; Prime Video, 42; and Disney+, 40.

Peacock and Paramount+ brought up the rear with eight and seven nominations, respectively. Also ranking high in nominations this year: FX with 37, not a streamer or a broadcast network but a basic cable channel.

The most-nominated network show this year is “Saturday Night Live” with nine. “SNL” is by far the most-nominated show in the history of the Emmy Awards with 324 nominations over its many years. Second is “Game of Thrones” with 159.

The second most-nominated network show this year is ABC’s “Abbott Elementary” with eight. By contrast, Apple TV’s “Ted Lasso” led all comedies with 21 nominations, followed by “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisal” on Prime Video with 14.

The network drama series with the most nominations this year is, well, there isn’t any.

The three most-nominated dramas this year are all on HBO Max: “Succession,” 27, “The Last Of Us,” 24; and “The White Lotus,” 23.

If I understand it right, the annual Emmy Awards on network TV was staged each year as an opportunity for the networks -- three of them, and then four when Fox joined the party in 1986 -- to blow their own horns.

Network TV has always aired the awards, and for all intents and purposes, won all the awards for decades, until cable started very slowly to chip away at this. 

If you think the number of network TV nominations this year is paltry when compared to the streamers, wait until the actual award winners are tallied after Monday’s show. The gap between network TV and streaming will be even wider.

The TV Blog remains a fan of network television -- the programs, the commercials, the linear scheduling, the whole hip-hip-hooray and ballyhoo.

Network TV has a lot of good shows too that, by today’s audience standards, are very popular. But network TV shows and the kinds of shows that have come to monopolize the Emmy awards and nominations are as different as night and day.

Maybe network TV ought to hold its own awards show -- the Nettys, anyone? -- and just hand the annual Emmy shows over to streaming television, where even fewer people will watch them.

“The 75th Emmy Awards” air live on Monday, January 15, from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern on Fox.