Emmy Ready for Its Close-Up

The 2010 Emmys have come and gone, but things will hardly be quiet for long. From a new TV deal that needs to be sorted out to a new competitor popping up, Emmy will be front and center long before next September. Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Chairman/ CEO John Shaffner spoke with B&C programming editor Marisa Guthrie about this year’s show and what lies ahead. Selected highlights of their conversation follow.

The Emmy telecast held pretty steady year-to-year, despite being on in the doldrums of summer. Are you happy with the ratings?
Yes, we’re just coasting on a delightful high from a well-received Emmy telecast, both by the home audience and the audience in the room, and our hold in rating [4.1 in adults 18-49, 13.5 million total viewers].

Did you expect the live airing on the West Coast to have more of a positive impact on the ratings than it apparently did?
Everyone was very nervous about the idea that if someone hadn’t seen all of it and then they’d seen the end of it, why would they stay to see the beginning? If you came in at 6 o’ clock, maybe you wanted to stay through and see how the show opened. I have nothing to back this theory up... It’s a challenge. Because it’s a television community event with the participation of the four major networks here, and let’s face it, we were disheartened when NBC made the deal with football. But that’s business, they had to do that. That did us in.

Wouldn’t the Emmys benefit from having one home, like the Oscars does with ABC?
We all know that perhaps that would benefit us. But at the same time, we also feel that we are the child with shared custody. It’s a very difficult thing to move into one house when you love them all equally. And so it’s a good idea to keep this a healthy good thing for everybody. So my goal is to keep everybody understanding that group-think here, this is the family reunion.

Does it matter whether the Emmys stays on broadcast or goes to a basic cable network?
I personally would like the Emmys to reach as large an audience as it can possibly get to. To be honest with you, broadcast television is still the greatest way to accrue the largest audience. So it doesn’t make sense to not want the largest audience that you can get. So my number-one goal is to make sure the broadcast is someplace that we can accrue the largest audience.

It’s interesting that in 2002, the last time the telecast was up for bid, HBO made a run at it. Now they really don’t need to.
At the time, I think the personalities involved had something to do with it. [Former HBO President] Chris Albrecht served on the board of the Academy and he was a fan of our work and he just wanted the Academy to succeed. The business models across the board have changed for everybody. It’s just a matter of how we in the television community figure out the best way to support the cost of doing the contest. Contests aren’t cheap.

What about the Paley Center’s attempts to mount their own television awards show?
We don’t know anything about it. They’ve announced they’re going to do it. But they’re challenged by, how do they run a contest? How do they pay for a contest? The license fee definitely goes a long way toward it for us, but we have some other revenue streams that we’ve worked on over the years that have helped us.

And the current license fee is more than $7 million.
Yes, it’s at $7.5 million. And something that gets very lost in the conversation is that out of that fund there’s a percentage of it that goes directly to support the National Academy, to the tune of more than $1 million. This license fee supports the National Academy and their good works, which reaches into all of daytime and news and sports. And likewise, another chunk of it is earmarked to go directly into our foundation fund, which then takes care of our College Television Awards and the internship program and of course our Archive of American Television. So it sounds like a big number, and then you start subtracting.

The Paley Center has some industry heavyweights on its board. Is there room for another TV awards show?
I think there is, but not at the same time of the year, and they’ve announced that they want to try to do something in May. So then my immediate question is, what is your eligibility period? Is it going to be a January-to-January contest? I don’t know how they will build the contest, how it will be structured, etc., to meet a May time zone.

Why do you think the Paley Center is doing this?
I think they would like to get more recognition because they do good work. And they’re looking for a revenue stream. But at the same time, I think they’re looking for a way to be a little more populist than we might be. And that would be their major distinction. I know the names that are behind it are very much engaged in populist television.

Emmys 2010: Complete Coverage from B&C:
See the complete interview with John Shaffner and much more about this year's Primetime Emmys at http://www.broadcastingcable.com/channel/Emmys.php.