Emmy Voting Now Open As Oscar Season Just Begins – Deadline

A column chronicling conversations and events on the awards circuit.

Emmy voting has begun! Oscar season has begun! What a weekend!

It appears to be the battle of the Academy viewing portals as final Emmy voting begins and the Television Academy is not only offering the digital ballot to the 20,000+ eligible voting members, but also a corresponding link to videos of the shows they are being asked to consider. Meanwhile the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has opened their digital viewing portal for Oscar season which kicks off in earnest in a few days at Venice, Telluride, and Toronto (but really is already well in progress thanks to “Barbenheimer”). More on the latter in a beat, but first….

Although I certainly didn’t have to be told voting was beginning (ballots are due back by 10pm PT August 28) as I answered the door Thursday morning to receive an FYC pie from Baking It (although it didn’t specify if Emmy nominated hosts Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph had cooked it themselves), I have to really congratulate the TV Academy and their digital savvy voting system. Yes, I am a longtime member but I have never seen such an easy and smooth operation when it comes to encouraging fair voting by making it so easy, with just a touch of the button really, to be able to watch all the nominated shows before casting your ballot. And rules are simple. You must have watched at least one episode of a series before voting in individual categories, and nominees are locked out of voting for themselves in the category in which they are personally nominated. Also, unlike Oscars, final voting is open only to members of individual branches for their votes, other than 15 program categories in which everyone gets a vote.

For instance I am in the writers branch (and a former Governor there for six years as well) and I get to weigh in on all six writing categories for which actual scripts in addition to videos are a click away on the portal. Additionally like everyone else, I will vote on the 15 general program categories open to the entire membership. They are Comedy, Drama, Limited or Anthology, Television Movie Talk Series, Variety Specials in the separate categories of Pre-Recorded, Live, and Scripted, Hosted Non-Fiction Series or Special, Game Show, Reality Competition, Unstructured Reality, Structured Reality, plus Short Form Comedy Drama Variety Series, and Short Form Non-Fiction or Reality.

What is great is that the Academy has provided simple viewing options on their portal for all of it. Six episodes each are provided for the eight Drama and eight Comedy series nominees. Limited or Anthology have all the episodes available and ready on the member’s ballot.

For most of the other categories, it is the individual nominated episodes that are provided. Outstanding Talk Series is a different situation as those are mostly daily shows so the nominations are represented on the site only by one single episode chosen by the producers of each. For Jimmy Kimmel Live it is the 20th Anniversary Special in which Jimmy interviews his younger self; For Late Show With Stephen Colbert it is the rare episode in which he did a pre-taped interview with Steven Spielberg and John Williams; for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah it is the Noah’s final show; for The Problem With Jon Stewart it is the episode focusing on the “war over gender”; and for Late Night With Seth Meyers it is a show with Kate Hudson and a “Day Drinking” segment in which he gets drunk with Lizzo. In light of recent negative publicity regarding Lizzo, that entry (chosen before those headlines) takes on perhaps a different feel watching it now as opposed to when it aired – or not depending on your state of mind.

In the Variety Scripted category, perennial Talk Series winner John Oliver has been moved for the first time to compete with two other weekly shows. His episode chosen is one where he talked about “museums.” Competitor and the usual winner here, Saturday Night Live chose the episode hosted by Pedro Pascal (who is also individually nominated in the Guest Actor Comedy category), while A Black Lady Sketch Show chose an episode dealing with “True Crimes Against Culture.” All of the above are easily available to watch on the portal before you cast your ballots folks, and a responsible voter should at least try to do that. The Academy certainly gives you the opportunity and no excuses not to do it.

The 75th Primetime Emmys, originally scheduled to take place September 18 on Fox, have of course been delayed due to the strikes and will now air on MLK day, January 15. But the decision was made not to move the voting schedule out of August since unforeseen events could possibly influence the way people might vote. The Academy wisely kept it all in place as originally planned. Accountants Ernst & Young will just have to keep it all quiet for a very long four and a half months.

MOTION PICTURE ACADEMY WELCOMES OSCAR SEASON – AND FYC MONEY

The other digital portal to keep voters occupied is the one run by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for the long, very long, Oscar season and “The Academy Screening Room” just went live today for its 10,000+ membership. It ain’t free for distributors, though. If you have a studio movie, it is $20K just to get your movie in front of the voters, and if you are an independent film, it will cost you $8K. Docs, International entries, and Animation are free but only for their one individual category — if you want to be considered for others, you have to pay. AMPAS makes quite a bit of cash off this service, and in fact beginning with last season nearly doubled the original fees it requested. You might recall last season’s surprise Best Actress Oscar nomination for Andrea Riseborough for the truly independent To Leslie…, a little-seen movie that benefitted big time from forking over the money to be on the portal. Despite its controversial grass roots, WOM campaign it is highly likely it never would have landed a nomination without the access to voters through the AMPAS portal. The $8k discount price indicates AMPAS is trying to even the playing field between the haves and the have-nots. Nine films are the first this year to join the portal. They are below in this screenshot:

No Barbie, Oppenheimer, or Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One so far. Those are the first movies since before the pandemic to draw turnaway crowds at their official AMPAS screenings at the Goldwyn Theatre earlier this summer so a lot of Oscar voter eyes have obviously seen them. The portal works well for movies that might not be as widely viewed, although Amazon’s Air and Universal’s $1 billion + grosser The Super Mario Bros Movie are likely an exception. The latter is going for a Best Song nomination in addition to Animated Feature. Air would seem to be a strong contender in numerous categories despite its spring release. Sony Classics’ wonderful Yogi Berra docu It Ain’t Over deserves serious consideration in Documentary Feature. IFC’s terrific indie, Blackberry is worthy in many ways including Glenn Howerton’s supporting turn. That is the kind of film that really could benefit from its early arrival on this portal, which as the season goes along will undoubtedly get quite crowded.

In a letter to members this morning about the opening of the Academy’s member only streaming platform AMPAS notes the service isn’t just for hopeful Oscar nominees, but also features Museum programming, features and shorts preserved by the Academy Film Archive, member spotlights, and much more.

THE WOMAN RESPONSIBLE FOR BET’S SOLE 2023 EMMY NOMINATION

But back to the Emmys and what I think is one of the most interesting Emmy Nominations of the season. It belongs to Mary Lou Belli, a veteran television director of countless shows, as well as a true mentor, through her books and classes to so others, and many getting opportunities with her guidance and advice. The interesting part is that Belli represents the sole 2023 Emmy nomination for Black Entertainment Television (BET) and she happens to be Caucasian. In fact, this is the second year in a row Belli finds herself in the running for Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series for the Black sitcom, The Ms. Pat Show.

This year the nomination came for the episode, “Don’t Touch My Hair” and she is thrilled no doubt to be in a category that otherwise includes such high profile contenders as Barry, The Bear, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Wednesday, and last year’s winner in the directing comedy category, Ted Lasso. Belli is just so happy to bring attention again to the series and all who work on it. In fact, she said she was so proud this summer when the show’s directorial team including the likes of Tasha Smith and Debbie Allen were honored by the African American Critics Association. She remembers the break she got when as a woman she was able to hit the glass ceiling and get hired in what was largely a man’s job in TV. She knows what it is like.

“Really, I was a minority when I was being hired. I just wasn’t, you know, in the black minority. And to be perfectly honest, then there were some wonderful African American directors, but the bench wasn’t quite deep enough,” she said but now hopes that is changing. She is constantly pushing for diversity as a Directing Branch Governor in the Television Academy and on various committees on which she serves in the Directors Guild, as well as her own aforementioned mentoring activities.

As for this second Primetime Emmy nomination for Ms. Pat, it is something special for her. “I’m so honored to be with these heavyweights and to have it for a second year in a row, I think lends some credibility to the fact that The Ms. Pat Show is doing something extraordinary in its own right and deserves to be seen, not only for that special storytelling, but for the universal storytelling and this episode in particular,” she said. “It’s about an abusive mother, and a daughter who is coming into her own strength and realizing she can heal from that. The hair is part of the episode but it really is so much more and the story is so universal. Whether it’s a mother daughter situation or not, we all have demons to face, you know, and it’s part of growing up and going on with our lives and facing those obstacles in our way.”