USA TODAY International Edition
It’s campaign season for TV shows, too
It’s good to be an Emmy voter. In the last month, members of the Television Academy have been treated to a John Legend musical performance, selfies on a stand-up stage from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Arby’s roast-beef sandwiches served by Baskets star Zach Galifianakis at a drive-through window.
Some 20,000 voters are being courted more heavily than ever this year by networks, studios and streaming services stumping for nominations. And winning (or at least getting nominated) is more critical for series vying for attention in a sea of nearly 500 shows. It can even determine their longevity.
“As the volume of Emmy-eligible content has grown, so too have the lengths to which content providers will go to capture the attention of voters,” says Scott Feinberg, awards columnist for The Hollywood Reporter.
A “nuclear explosion” of For Your Consideration (FYC) events has overtaken Hollywood, says Tom O’Neil, editor of awards-prediction site Gold Derby, thanks to the academy’s lifting of a rule that allowed only one sanctioned event per night in the critical two months before nomination voting begins. This spring has seen nearly 100 events, a more than 50% increase from 2017.
Aside from screenings, panels, cocktails and the chance to hobnob with stars, Los Angeles and New York are wallpapered with billboards, streetlight banners and bus-shelter ads ahead of Monday’s start of the two-week voting period for 2018 nominees. Contenders will be announced July 12, and the winners get their golden statuettes Sept. 17 on NBC.
The popularity of the events can pose a risk. At a reception Saturday at Netflix’s cavernous, costly FYSee space, the crowd surrounding Grace and Frankie stars got so unwieldy that a woman backed into a nearby mural of Orange Is the New Black characters made from Cheetos. An alert employee prevented an orange-dust disaster.
For programmers, there’s no way to measure what an Emmy campaign yields in terms of nominations and awards. While Netflix and Amazon had big presentation spaces last year, rival Hulu became the first streaming service to win a series Emmy, for The Handmaid’s Tale. (Netflix took home four major awards in other categories.)
“Nobody can prove it’s making a difference,” Feinberg says. But “the way they see it, you’re not in the game if people aren’t aware of you.”
Once nominees are announced, an intense but more narrowly focused campaign will resume.
Experience reveals other potential benefits: Low-rated 30 Rock, Cheers and Hill Street Blues might never have survived to become TV classics without Emmys recognition. Awards have helped HBO, FX and AMC build reputations as destinations for quality programming.
One danger is that a superior series might lose to a show with a bigger, better
marketing effort, a critique leveled at Harvey Weinstein’s aggressive Oscar campaigns.
At the Grace and Frankie panel, costar Sam Waterston alluded to the blessing and curse of such dog-and-pony shows and added a campaign pitch.
“These things can be brutal, honestly, (but) this is a huge pleasure. It’s because of you,” he said to the audience of Academy members. “Thank you very much for being interested in watching. Keep it up and, by the way, also vote.”
Escalating Emmy campaigns, which O’Neil estimates will cost studios and networks $150 million this year, also reflect the loud arrival of newer streaming players. Netflix is showcasing more than two dozen Emmy contenders, and nominations and awards can pay off with monthly subscriber growth.
Amazon for a second year took over the Hollywood Athletic Club to showcase its programs, including a presentation for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel designed to take viewers back to the show’s New York of the 1950s.
Netflix rented three soundstages to create a theater for screenings and panels and a theme park where voters can get Rorschach depictions of their faces at a Mindhunter installation, walk through a Stranger Things tunnel and feel a simulated cattle stampede from the vibrating floor at the Godless saloon. Barbra Streisand is scheduled to perform at a closing panel Sunday.
Although they’re not spending Netflix money, others are adapting. ABC highlighted its offerings last weekend on the Disney lot, while FX went creative by staging an event at Arby’s, a reference and setting for the Galifianakis comedy.
The quirky location provided something you don’t see at traditional events, as an SUV driver expressed displeasure that the restaurant was closed to regular customers.
“This guy’s giving us the finger!” Galifianakis exclaimed during a chat with reporters inside. “That’s fantastic! He keeps doing road rage.”
The unscripted encounter livened up the event for the actor, who mistakenly called it “FYF” and seemed happy to avoid a more “precious” formal setting. Still, he’s got to hope that driver isn’t an Emmy voter.