Emmys could use a regular home after record-low ratings

Every other major awards show has one. The Grammys and Tonys play on CBS. The Oscars belong to ABC. And the Golden Globes have become a fixture on NBC, lending credibility to the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. event that it once conspicuously lacked.The Emmys, however, have long rotated among ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox — a "wheel" configuration, designed to create harmony by having the top broadcasters share the industry's biggest prize. The noble idea was that everyone would be invested in the Emmys, and thus have a stake in its success.The Television Academy renewed its broadcast deal last year, ensuring that the awards would continue to rotate among the Big Four through 2026. But that was then, and this is now — "now" being an era when broadcasters barely have a seat at the Emmy table, in a ceremony dominated by premium channels (a la HBO) and streaming services Netflix, Amazon, and to a lesser degree, Hulu, with more on the way.NBC was the only broadcaster to garner any gold on Sunday night (a pair of wins for "Saturday Night Live"), and the four-network tally for the entire Emmy process (16 overall) was less than half of HBO's take of 34.At this point, the major networks televising the Emmys is a little like coaching a youth soccer team when your kids aren't playing.Small wonder Fox turned in a lackluster presentation, filling the arrival show with promotion for its musical show "The Masked Singer" that felt every bit as cheesy as that sounds.Emmy ratings usually experience a dip when Fox hosts the show, but up against a "Sunday Night Football" game that featured the Los Angeles Rams, the decline was especially precipitous, and included the indignity of getting trounced locally in what amounts to the Emmys' home town.Overall, preliminary ratings for the Emmys swooned by more than 20% compared to last year, the kind of drop that gets people's attention.A single-network deal won't solve everything that ails the Emmys, but it will give the Television Academy, which presents the awards, a partner with an ongoing investment in the ceremony. As it stands, the Emmys become a showcase for the network in question's particular needs — from featuring its latenight host (a personality that Fox lacks) to promoting its fall lineup — without giving enough consideration to what will make the broadcast work, and not incidentally, upholding the awards' reputation.The biggest challenge facing award shows generally is sheer gravity, with a glut of content — much of it largely unseen by the public at large — mitigating rootRead More – Source