Why Do All the Emmy Nominees Feel So Old?
While watching Monday night’s Emmy Awards, you may notice that so many of the nominated shows and actors have a thin layer of dust covering them. No, that isn’t asbestos particles raining down from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. It’s that the nominated shows feel practically prehistoric in the fast-moving age of the streamer.
This disconnect is because the 75th Annual Emmy Awards ceremony had its telecast delayed from its original mid-September airdate due to the then-ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, meaning the telecast is airing more than four months later than planned. As the dog days of summer 2023 dwindled, it became clear that the Emmys were going to be another casualty of the major Hollywood studios’ reluctance to bargain with the unions that keep the town running. So, the telecast was delayed, in hopes that the WGA and SAG-AFTRA would attain a fair contract by the new year—which, thankfully, they have.
While that’s the good news, there’s some worse, stranger news: Everything nominated at the Emmys feels downright ancient. The ceremony is still honoring the same eligibility window as it usually does, and in the case of tonight’s show, that window closed back in May 2023—eight months ago. If you do the math, we’re going to be watching shows from the 365 days between May 2022 (20 months ago!) and May 2023 be honored, while we sit here firmly in 2024, with another summer and fall of TV behind us that the Television Academy has yet to even parse through. This means that there’s a confounding ceremony in store for tonight, and an even more tricky future for the Emmys as the industry recovers from the strikes.