The Emmys Are Changing Again, and One Show Is Getting Particularly Screwed

DTF St. Louiswent from seven nominees eligible for the ceremony’s main telecast to just one.
Photo: Tina Rowden/HBO

July 8 was a great day for the folks who made DTF St. Louis. The HBO limited series starring Jason Bateman, David Harbour, and Linda Cardellini received 13 Emmy nominations and eight in the major categories. The only show that boasted more major nominations was The Pittwith 12. Just nine days later, however, the Emmys announced that they would be reducing the number of categories presented on the main Emmys telecast and bumping four of the limited-series categories to the Creative Arts ceremony, held the weekend before. The decision swept all but one of DTF St. Louis’s nominations off of the main Emmys telecast, including all five of the show’s acting nominations.

All told, this year’s Emmy Awards will present seven fewer categories on the main telecast than last year:
• The formerly divided Talk Series and Scripted Variety Series categories have been recombined into Outstanding Variety Series, taking away one category.
• The Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series and Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special categories — which have alternated placement on the main telecast every year since 2009 — will now both be presented at the Creative Arts ceremony.
• Outstanding Variety Special (Live), which has intermittently been a presence on the main telecast, including last year, when the award went to SNL 50, is now back on the Creative Arts docket.
• Four categories honoring limited or anthology series have also been demoted: Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress in a Limited Series, Anthology, or Movie; Writing for a Limited Series, Anthology, or Movie; and Directing for a Limited Series, Anthology, or Movie.

It’s the first time any of these four categories have been bumped off of the main telecast since they came into being. And it’s where DTF St. Louis had seven nominations relegated: acting nods for Jason Bateman, David Harbour, Richard Jenkins, Linda Cardellini, and Joy Sunday, plus two nominations for Steven Conrad in writing and directing. The only nomination that remains on the docket for NBC’s main Emmys telecast is in the Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series category. Compare that loss with its competitors: Netflix’s Beef had five nominees get the boot, with Charles Melton and Youn Yuh-jung in the supporting categories, Jake Schreier in Directing, and Lee Sung Jin in Writing and Directing. The only other show to have more than one nominee relegated was All Her Fault for acting nominee Dakota Fanning and writing nominee Megan Gallagher.

There’s more than a little dramatic irony to the fact that DTF St. Louis got so disproportionately screwed by this category shuffle. At the outset of its Emmys campaign, the decision was made to submit every member of the show’s main cast in the supporting-acting categories. Bateman, Harbour, and Cardellini — the three leads of the show, who all appear on the show’s poster, with their names above the title — all eschewed lead categorization, ostensibly so they’d have a clearer path to nominations and/or wins. It worked: All three actors were rewarded with nominations for what most Emmy observers would call blatant category fraud. Jenkins and Sunday, two actual supporting players, were nominated as well, somewhat unexpectedly so.

In general, DTF St. Louis outperformed its expectations in the nomination stage, earning some good momentum heading into phase two of the voting, where the Limited Series category felt — and frankly continues to feel — pretty wide open. But having seven of those nominations dropped from the main telecast creates a perception problem, suggesting DTFis a secondary series compared to shows like Beef and The Beast in Me, both of which have acting nominees in the lead categories and as a result will get that much more of the spotlight.

The material benefit of the Emmys — of all awards shows, really — is almost entirely intangible. An actor’s salary can go up based on the prestige of a nomination, and certainly a win, but we can never know the exact dollar amount. TV shows can stay on the air for longer if they help fortify their networks’ trophy cases, but that calculus is also mostly ephemeral. The most immediate impact for the shows and individuals nominated for Emmys is attention. The Studio won four Emmys on last year’s main telecast; The Pittwon three. They’re the shows that viewers will walk away from the ceremony remembering. Jeff Hiller’s surprise Supporting Actor in a Comedywin for Somebody Somewhere was the best publicity that show ever got, all from just one award.

The nominees and winners at the Creative Arts Emmys aren’t lesser talents working on lesser shows. But the spotlight afforded to them is vastly dimmer. The main Emmys telecast is being broadcast live on NBC and Peacock on Monday, September 14. Last year’s main ceremony was viewed by 7.59 million people. The Creative Arts ceremony will be held over the course of two nights, September 5 and 6, then aired in prerecorded fashion on FXX on Saturday, September 12. It’ll be made available to stream on Hulu the next day. Nielsen didn’t release the viewership numbers for last year’s Creative Arts Emmys, but how many people do you know who watch FXX?

Last year, The Penguin won just one award on the main Emmys telecast, an Outstanding Lead Actress trophy for Cristin Milioti, which she accepted with a whooping “I love acting!” The week before, The Boys and Bridgerton each won three awards at the Creative Arts Emmys. Milioti and The Penguin got their moment in the spotlight; The Boys and Bridgertondidn’t.

Between the loss of prestige and the last-minute schedule change (the September 5 and 6 ceremony conflicts with not only Labor Day weekend but the Telluride and Venice film festivals, too), industry professionals were reportedly not happy about the decision. One award strategist ranted to Variety that the Emmys “fucked this up,” later saying, “All they’ve done is piss off a lot of the people and stars they are trying to court and attend their ceremony. I think this will blow up in their face.”

It’s exceedingly unlikely that the Emmys decided to move this handful of categories in order to target one show, but it feels like a decision made hastily and heedlessly, without much consideration for the contenders that had their Emmys spotlight significantly shrunk. The official Television Academy statement that accompanied the announcement offered something approaching a reasoning:

The Television Academy is committed to delivering a fresh new take on the Emmys broadcast, with a focus on entertainment that celebrates television shows, artists and moments audiences love while honoring excellent work from the past year. Given the extraordinary breadth of work recognized each year and the limited time available within a three-hour broadcast, a select number of categories will be moving to the Emmy ceremonies taking place the week prior to the telecast. This thoughtful evolution ensures this year’s NBC ceremony and future broadcasts remain deeply engaging and tailored to the television audience.

A “fresh take,” a “focus on entertainment,” and the promise of a “deeply engaging” broadcast all sound like dog whistles for “make Emmys less boring.” This is a mission statement that has been internalized by several awards shows over the past couple decades, as viewership for ceremonies like the Oscars, Golden Globes, and Grammys has fallen. The Oscars have tried introducing new hosts, nixing hosts, incorporating non-nominated musical performances from movies like Bohemian Rhapsody and Wicked,bumping craft categories to the red-carpet show, and, most infamously in 2022, adding fan-voted categories for Fan Favorite and Oscars Cheer Moment. The Grammys, meanwhile, have been intermittently successful in shifting the focus away from most of the awards categories — the grand majority of which are presented before the main telecast begins — and turning the proper Grammys show into more or less a concert with a handful of acceptance speeches thrown in to keep to tradition.

In recent years, the Emmys have gone heavy on reunion moments for beloved shows of yore. Just the last two years have featured tributes to The Golden Girls, Law & Order, Gilmore Girls, Happy Days, and The West Wing. When the category movements were announced last month, TV Academy president Cris Abrego communicated to Variety that he hoped vacancy in airtime would allow for “more leeway for musical performances, comedic bits and unexpected acceptance speeches.” If we’re looking to parse language choices, Abrego hoping for “unexpected” acceptance speeches may be a clue that the Academy hasn’t been thrilled with the recent history of boring clean sweeps in the Limited Series categories. Adolescence won everything in sight last year, Baby Reindeer dominated in 2024, Beef in 2023, and The White Lotus in 2022. Meanwhile, the also-relegated Outstanding Writing for a Variety Seriescategory hasn’t gone to a show that wasn’t Last Week Tonight With John Oliver since 2015.

Are sweeps and repeat winners boring? Absolutely. Do the Emmys sometimes feel like they’re rushing through the awards lineup in order to fit all the categories in? Sure. But bumping seven categories to the far less prestigious, far less watched Creative Arts ceremony in favor of “musical performances and comedic bits” tells me you’re producing an awards show but have next to no interest in the parts that involve the awards. This year, DTF St. Louis felt that kind of hostility most sharply, but it’s an affront to shows like Death by Lightning and The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and to individuals like Laurie Metcalf, Charles Melton, Lee Sung Jin, and Steven Conrad, who even if they win aren’t going to get the big Emmy spotlight they deserve.

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According to Variety’s announcement of these category changes, the Emmys are now no longer referring to the earlier Emmys ceremony that takes place the weekend before the main Emmys telecast as the “Creative Arts Emmys,” instead referring to both weekends’ worth of awards as the Emmy Awards. For clarity’s sake — and since both NBC still refers to them as the Creative Arts Emmys — that’s how we will refer to them.

The Emmys Are Changing Again, and One Show Got Screwed