"Most Popular" Shows: From Oscar To Emmy?

[Sal]

Earlier this month, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the people behind the Academy Awards, announced a new category that will be added to next year's awards, which will officially be known as “Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film” which, loosely translated, means "Best Popular Film". The category was created partly to quiet complaints that the most popular movies, especially comedies, don't get enough Oscar nominations, giving way to the more critically acclaimed movies that are considered masterpieces by film critics but frightfully boring by moviegoers. This has caused a great deal of controversy among movie fans who feel that that this new category has cheapened the value of an Oscar and that quality has given way to commercialism.


Which brings me to TV where quality was last seen around 1994:


If you apply that logic to television and look at the lists for this year's Emmy nominations, I wonder if they should look to add a "Best Popular Series" Emmy award as well. For example, if you consider the most popular series to be the ones that get the highest ratings, then the most likely nominees based on their positions in the ratings would be "Roseanne", "The Big Bang Theory", "Young Sheldon", and "Mom". Between them you would expect at least a couple of nominations for each series but this year that is far from the case. In the 9 major comedy categories, the 4 shows have combined for exactly 2 (!!) nominations and both are fairly predictable: Laurie Metcalf for Best Supporting Actress for Roseanne and Allison Janney for Best Lead Actress for Mom. Just like with the Oscars, the majority of the Emmy nominations are for the critical favorites that are mainly located in the cable and streaming networks where their level of popularity is tougher to measure. Does this seem fair to you? Should shows with higher Nielsen ratings get a break from the Emmy voters like they appear to be doing with their movie peers? What do you think?

[Babalu]

Originally Posted by Alan Brady's Hair

My sense is that the Oscars are trying to latch onto the popularity of the comic book blockbusters, rather than actually trying to honor them. I'm not sure any TV show, even Big Bang, has an audience now that's big enough to create special awards for it.

Exactly. They've honored snooty films for all these years. Now people just don't care anymore. They're too busy playing with their phones.