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Emmy Awards set to be postponed amid Hollywood’s double strike
The Industry Jul 28, 2023
The 2009 Philo T. Farnsworth Primetime Emmy Award Statue given to NASA Television in recognition for engineering excellence and technological innovations that made possible the first live TV broadcast from the moon by the Apollo 11 is shown on Aug. 19, 2009 at NASA Headquarters in Washington. | Photo by NASA/Bill Ingalls (CC BY 2.0)
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The 75th Primetime Emmy Awards appeared Friday to be the latest casualty of the double strike that has brought Hollywood to a standstill.
With walkouts by the Writers Guild of America and the SAG-AFTRA actors union already shuttering scripted productions across the film and television industries, Fox is now poised to postpone the scheduled Sept. 18 broadcast of the Emmys until January, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.
The network is expected to make the official announcement “soon,” the Times reported, quoting a person familiar with the plan who was not authorized to comment.
But with no word of talks between the striking WGA and SAG-AFTRA union members and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers — which represents the studios — even that date could be subject to further postponement.
The postponement would mark the first time since 2001 — in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks — that the Emmys have not been presented as scheduled.
SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikers were back on the picket lines at all the major Los Angeles-area studios again Friday.
The actors’ union, which walked off the job on July 14, is focusing on many of the same issues that pushed the WGA to call a strike on May 2 — including calls for revised residual formulas for streaming content and protections against the use of artificial intelligence in film and TV production.
The actors union has not gone on strike since 1980. The WGA went out on strike for 100 days starting in 2007. The double-barreled SAG-AFTRA/WGA walkout marks the first time since 1960 that both unions have struck Hollywood at the same time.
The AMPTP represents studios, networks and streaming services. The actors union represents about 160,000 performers.
Both SAG-AFTRA and the WGA had accused the AMPTP on bargaining in bad faith when the sides were talking. When SAG-AFTRA made its strike announcement on July 14, union President Fran Drescher angrily denounced the major studios as “a very greedy entity,” while the studios’ bargaining arm countered that it had offered “historic” benefit boosts.
“I am shocked by the way the people that we have been in business with are treating us,” Drescher said at the time. “I cannot believe it, quite frankly, how far apart we are on so many things.”
Following SAG-AFTRA’s strike announcement, the AMPTP issued its own statement saying, “AMPTP member companies entered the negotiations with SAG- AFTRA with the goal of forging a new, mutually beneficial contract.”
The statement went on to say, “The AMPTP presented a deal that offered historic pay and residual increases, substantially higher caps on pension and health contributions, audition protections, shortened series option periods and a groundbreaking AI proposal that protects actors’ digital likenesses for SAG-AFTRA members.”
When the Emmys do finally come off, the HBO series “Succession” will enter the awards ceremony with a leading 27 nominations, followed by “The Last of Us” with 24, “The White Lotus” with 23 and “Ted Lasso” with 21.
The Daytime Emmy Awards ceremonies, which had been scheduled for June in downtown Los Angeles, were postponed in May because of the writers strike. A new date has not been announced.
