In September, the 2024 Primetime Emmy Awards aired and reached the highest viewership in the last four years. The Emmys saw a decrease in ratings almost every year since 2013, with the delayed 2023 ceremony that aired in January hitting an all-time record low.
I have also not tuned in since 2013. Or ever, for really any film award show. Not that I haven’t kept up with what’s important, though. I could tell you all about the Will Smith slap incident or how “Moonlight” was able to overcome “La La Land” for Best Picture at the 89th Academy Awards.
Outside of the missteps and mistakes, there are also several more monumental moments I have kept up with throughout the years. Michelle Yeoh’s acceptance speech as the first Asian woman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress and Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda’s recent Emmy win for Outstanding Hard News Feature Story for her documentary covering the Israeli invasion of the Gaza strip.
What made these wins memorable for me as someone who doesn’t keep up with these award shows was not the nominations themselves, but what they meant in a broader mainstream context.
Xavier Greene, a fourth-year University of Minnesota student and co-president of the UMN Film Club, said this year’s nominations provided a balance of mainstream appeal that many more casual viewers could appreciate.
“I think this year’s awards were a great example of finding the balance between more niche films and more wide audience appeal in terms of nominations,” Greene said. “But then there’s been years prior where there are so many films no one’s heard of.”
Greene said some of the cultural “firsts” that award shows have are exciting for audiences to see, but they shouldn’t still be happening in the year 2024.
“There’s a certain point where the first ‘XYZ’ nomination shouldn’t be happening anymore,” Greene said. “I think those types of statistics are outdated, or they should be outdated. It shouldn’t be like this grandiose thing anymore, but unfortunately, it’s just not the reality that we live in.”
As Greene noted, if the relevancy of the awards for many is the new disruption of the exclusivity they have held for so long, that’s a problem.
Kelly Nathe, programmer and publicist for MSP Film Society as well as Emmy award-winning producer for her work on the television show, “The Zimmern List,” spoke about how these awards hold a lot of cultural significance because they are about industry peers recognizing each other.
“When it comes to the Oscars and the Emmys, peers are the ones awarding their peers,” Nathe said. “I think if I were to go back to work in production, yes, having an Emmy looks good on your resume. Particularly, if I were in LA or New York, it would probably be quite helpful, because there’s also member organizations I would probably be eligible to join that could help advance my career in those communities.”
Nathe said this aspect of the nominations contributes to the lack of diversity we have often seen.
“A lot of people don’t know what it is like to get into the Academy,” Nathe said. “If you’re nominated for an Academy Award, you’re usually invited to join the Academy. Then, you can only nominate in your own category. So it’s been this old, white boys club for a really long time because they made each other and they invite each other.”
Perhaps this is a reason why award shows have lost traction in the last decade. The boys club is boring.
Nathe cited streaming platforms and social media as two reasons viewership has decreased but said these aren’t necessarily bad things.
“The old school world of Hollywood and the old guard kind of grumbles about all these films getting nominated that are produced for Netflix or Amazon Prime, and only do one week in a movie theater just to qualify,” Nathe said.
Compared to the old guard, younger audiences simply don’t consume content in the same way either.
“The television and the film academies know that the younger generations aren’t sitting through a three-hour televised award show. That’s not the way they get their entertainment,” Nathe said. “(The academies) are certainly becoming more and more active on TikTok and other platforms to have the viral moments ready to upload immediately.”
Like I mentioned earlier, why would I sit through a three-hour television program airing on a cable network I don’t have if I can watch Will Smith slap Chris Rock for free on TikTok?
Film as an art form is a reflection of society and its artists. Society isn’t made up of one singular cultural, age or income demographic. These awards may have been originally designed for peers to give each other, but their significance has morphed into something more.
To continue this evolution, film and television academies should recognize the new audiences they could have, and lean into efforts to diversify nominations and content accessibility.