If you thought the Emmy Awards — which, between the Primetime telecast and two Creative Arts Awards ceremonies — didn’t already nominate enough shows and talent, get ready for even more.
In recognition of the fact that Emmy submissions are up 15 percent over last season, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has decided to tie the number of nominees to the number of submissions per category.
And, using the new math, we can now expect eight, rather than seven, nominees for the two most prominent categories, best drama series and best comedy series.
“The increase in submissions is a reflection of the number of new voices, new television platforms and a tremendous growth in content from existing platforms across our industry,” TV Academy chairman and CEO Frank Scherma said in a statement. “Despite production suspension resulting from COVID-19, there is a wealth of excellent work submitted for this year’s competition.”
The number of nominations in a category will now be determined using the following criteria:
1-19 submissions: A sliding scale between zero to 4 nominations
20-80 submissions: 5 nominations
81-160 submissions: 6 nominations
161-240 submissions: 7 nominations
240 submissions: 8 nominations
Paired performer categories (e.g., supporting actor comedy and supporting actress comedy) will have parity in the number of nominations.
This new rule also eliminates the previous 2 percent rule, which specified that in categories with five nominees, if the fifth and sixth top vote-getters were within 2 percent of each other, both would be nominated.
