60th Annual Emmy Award Show

At first I was going to try and write a live blog of the Emmy's but after watching for a few minutes I realized how boring that would be. So, instead I am going to write my thoughts on the show and what has happened to what was once an event of the week.

This morning I saw a news headline that said that last night's Emmy's were the lowest rated ever. Is this honestly a surprise? The shows that were nominated no one watches so why would anyone watch the awards show?

The problem is the whole Award system. Now I don't know much about it but I do know that there must be something a little off if most of the shows that are nominated no one watches (or ever heard of).

Let's get over the fact that most of the shows, no one ever heard of and move on to the fact that its because they are all on cable. I think the first thing the people in charge need to do is separate the shows that are on network TV and Cable TV. The biggest reason is because there are different standards for shows on network vs cable and it really isn't fair to compare the shows in the same category. Especially considering there are a good number of people in this world (yet as surprising as it might be) but there are still people who don't have cable. So when they watch an awards show on their network TV channel and then turn it off because they don't know any of the shows since they are mostly from cable, is anyone really surprised?

Some might say its a decline in the type of available TV shows on network TV for why they don't get the nomination nods viewers might feel they deserve but I don't think that is really the case. I think that while it is not the viewers that vote or nominate it is the viewers who watch the shows. And I am sure advertisers should fit in there somewhere too but I don't feel like delving into that at this point.

I guess I just think the system is a little broken and continued declining ratings for these awards shows is evidence of that. I thought it would be really interesting this year to see the reality competion hosts host the event but it didn't go so well. And there wasn't even many interesting extras. I did like the kick backs to old school shows but they really could have done a lot more with that than they did.

Of course the overall theme I took away from the show was how pressed for time they were and how that affected different "bits" either being cut or played out as if they were cut and either way it wasn't funny. I think that part of their neeed to worry about going over time goes back to the fact that you can't really justify the extra time needed when no one is watching. If the Superbowl goes long, no one cares because EVERYONE is watching it. Even people who don't care about football but where at one time people (like myself) who love TV and will watch anything TV related would tune in, these days some people I talked to didn't even realize the award show was on last night.

That isn't really good for the award shows.