The Emmys Will Never Be a Hit

Daniel D'Addario thinks the Emmys are just never going to match the Oscars
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 19, 2013 10:30 AM CDT
The Emmys Will Never Be a Hit
Are people really going to catch up on five seasons of Breaking Bad just because it won an Emmy?   (AP Photo/AMC, Frank Ockenfels)

Pretty much everyone agrees that TV is getting smarter and better as movies get worse and dumber. But for some reason, "the Emmys aren't quite the Oscars," complains Daniel D'Addario at Salon. Emmy viewership hovers around 13 million, which is "respectable enough, but not close to the Oscars on their worst year," and no one will be handicapping the races, or obsessing about the host's performance with anywhere near the fervor the Oscars regularly command.

One issue is that the field is dominated by niche cable dramas, and thanks to the serialization trend, almost nobody watches them all. Nor does winning boost a show's audience or a star's cachet. The Emmys are following the buzz, not creating it. TV experts point out the two winners: The networks, whose reputation can get a bump (see: Netflix), and the entertainment community, which gets to pat itself on the back. As for big ideas on how to fix the problem, D'Addario comes up empty-handed: "There seem to be few options to the Emmys’ dilemma, and to the corner they’re painted into." For more on this year's nominations, click here, or here for the full column. (More Emmy Awards stories.)

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