2017 Emmy Award Odds Reality/Variety Programs
–The 2017 Emmy Awards will be held on September 17, 2017
–Stephen Colbert will host the Emmy Awards broadcast.
–Nominations were announced on July 13, 2017.
These are the final categories I’ve set odds for and in many ways they’re somewhat antiquated. The ‘variety show’ as it has historically been defined enjoyed its apex in the 1960’s and 1970’s. That’s evident in this list of the ‘Best Ever’ variety shows—Carol Burnett and Dean Martin’s shows are rightfully at the top of the heap (though putting Johnny Carson anywhere but in the top three is ridiculous) and they ended in 1978 and 1974 respectively. Only three of the top 30 shows are still on the air (Korean variety show ‘Running Man’, Saturday Night Live and The Ellen DeGeneres Show) and represent the only entries in the list that were still in production after 2000.
The term ‘variety show’ dates back to the late 1800’s and is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as “a theatrical entertainment of successive separate performances (as of songs, dances, skits, and acrobatic feats).” You can check multiple sources but the operative terms of the ‘variety’ show always include ‘short, unrelated performances’. That’s the premise of most historical overviews of the genre as well such as these at TV Tropes and PBS. They’re both worth reading and advocate several points I’m making here–the ‘variety show’ is a relic of a different era of television and it’s a stretch to apply the term to anything on television today.
In other words, it’s long past time for the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences to update these categories. Every form of analog era was caught with their pants down by the digital revolution but the demise of the variety show predates that. The PBS overview attributes the decline of the variety show in part to audiences “more fractured than ever with the advent of the remote control and cable television” which has only accelerated in the past decade and is decades from reaching terminal velocity. The TV Tropes overview gives a tangentially related causality: “tastes were becoming more polarized; whereas formerly people could endure musical styles they didn’t care for much, more and more people actually HATED styles they disfavored” along with simple ‘fatigue with the genre’.”
THE DEATH OF ‘CONSENSUS’ TELEVISION VIEWING
The TV Tropes point about ‘polarized tastes’ is crucial to understanding not only today’s television landscape but countless disciplines and industries. It’s a point I make often here in my analysis, most recently in one of the ‘Game of Thrones’ writeups. Time Magazine recently suggested that ‘GoT’ is ‘the last consensus show on television‘. Maybe, but looking at the numbers suggests that the patient has been dead, buried and decomposing for awhile now. Last Sunday’s ‘GoT’ Season 7 premiere was watched by a HBO network record 16.1 million viewers and it will likely be watched by a similar number through other methods such as online streaming (though it’s difficult to get an accurate metric on these digital era viewing formats). For the basis of our discussion we’ll call it 32 million total viewers watching the Season 7 debut of ‘GoT’.
That’s a great number but it’s hard to define ‘GoT’ as ‘consensus television’ once you put it in a historical context. The final episode of the preachy Korean War comedy ‘M.A.S.H’. was viewed by an estimated 1.06 million viewers pulling a 60.2 rating and a 77 share. ‘Game of Thrones’ is definitely an excellent show but 16.1 million viewers for the first run on HBO is far from ‘consensus television’. That’s approximately the same number of people that watched ‘Eight is Enough’ every week in 1977. During that year the top 12 weekly shows drew more than 16.1 million viewers a week. Fifteen years later, the final episode of ‘Seinfeld’ watch watched by 76.3 million viewers. During the 2000s live sporting events became the last bastion of ‘consensus television’ and ESPN became a broadcasting giant. Even live sports viewership is starting to decline for the same reasons that overall TV viewership is declining. Sports have been so dominant during the 2000s that most ratings lists exclude sporting events in order to get an accurate picture of what TV series are popular. In 2016, for example, only 4 weekly series appeared in the top 50 most watched TV shows (’60 Minutes’ at #39 was the highest ranked). You can make a more salient case that ‘Game of Thrones’ is the most significant TV of the moment factoring in social media, press coverage and general ‘buzz’ but that’s a tough thing to quantify.
The ‘consensus show’ is dead. It is completely possible–if not downright easy–to avoid seeing *anything* related to ‘Game of Thrones’ if you choose to do so. It’s the same with any other show, subject, actor, genre or whatever. Maybe what we have now is not so much ‘polarized tastes’ as argued by TV Tropes but the ability to better accommodate individual interests (and disinterests). People don’t just avoid what they find repugnant they have the ability to not be exposed to anything they’re not interested in. For example, I have little interest in mainstream media coverage of the Windows operating system so I customize my ‘media input’ to focus on Linux coverage. It’s not polarization–I don’t hate Windows or anything–I’m just not particularly interested in it and have no reason to consume media that covers it. The exact same dynamic is why the ‘variety show’ is long gone and why it’s not coming back.
THE EMMY AWARDS ‘VARIETY’ CATEGORIES
The only acquiescence to the transformative change in television broadcasting over the past couple of decades has been the addition of a mere two categories–‘Outstanding Reality Competition Program’ was added in 2003 and ‘Outstanding Reality Host’ added in 2008. They’ve killed off some categories–mostly technical but some due to changes in viewer taste such as ‘Best Western Program’ and ‘Best Kinescope Show’. It’s apparent that the Emmys need to do something to adapt to the new era of digital entertainment or they might be the ones ‘killed off’–in 2016 for the second straight year the Emmy Award Broadcast attracted their smallest viewership in history.
One salvation of the Emmy Awards–you can bet on it. I’ve finished the odds for the major (and semi major) categories and will be posting them over the next 24 hours. This one will go up first with Comedy Programming, Drama Programming and the Limited Series/TV Movie category. When we get closer to the actual broadcast I’ll add in some more prop bets specific to the awards broadcast itself including–you guessed it–some more TV ratings props.
69TH PRIMETIME REALITY/VARIETY EMMY AWARDS 2017 BETTING ODDS
TO WIN THE EMMY FOR OUTSTANDING REALITY COMPETITION PROGRAM
RuPaul’s Drag Race: -250
The Amazing Race: +500
Top Chef: +500
The Voice: +700
Project Runway: +2100
American Ninja Warrior: +2100
TO WIN THE EMMY FOR OUTSTANDING REALITY HOST
RuPaul: -500
Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg: +350
Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn: +750
Alec Baldwin: +1250
W. Kamau Bell: +2500
Gordon Ramsey: +2100
TO WIN THE EMMY FOR OUTSTANDING VARIETY TALK SERIES
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: -125
Full Frontal with Samantha Bee: +150
Late Show with Stephen Colbert: +350
Late Late Show with James Corden: +2700
Real Time with Bill Maher: +5000
Jimmy Kimmel Live: +5000
TO WIN THE EMMY FOR OUTSTANDING VARIETY SKETCH SERIES
Saturday Night Live: -1500
Tracy Ullman’s Show: +900
Portlandia: +1500
Documentary Now: +1500
Drunk History: +2100
Billy on the Street: +2100
TO WIN THE EMMY FOR OUTSTANDING VARIETY SPECIAL
Not the White House Correspondents Dinner: -110
Louis CK: 2017: +150
Stephen Colbert’s Live Election Night: +900
Sarah Silverman: A Speck of Dust: +900
Geoffrey Rush: +900
Carpool Karaoke Primetime Special 2017: +2500
TO WIN THE EMMY FOR OUTSTANDING SPECIAL CLASS PROGRAM
Hairspray Live: -115
Super Bowl LI Halftime Show: +250
70th Annual Tony Awards: +350
The Oscars: +350
TO WIN THE EMMY FOR OUTSTANDING VARIETY SERIES DIRECTING
Saturday Night Live: -500
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: +300
Late Show with Stephen Colbert: +750
Drunk History: +900
Billy on the Street: +1250
TO WIN THE EMMY FOR OUTSTANDING VARIETY SERIES WRITING
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: -150
Late Show with Stephen Colbert: +300
Full Frontal with Samantha Bee: +500
Saturday Night Live: +500
Late Night with Seth Meyers: +1250
TO WIN THE EMMY FOR OUTSTANDING VARIETY SPECIAL DIRECTING
Not the White House Correspondents Dinner: +115
The Oscars: +250
Stephen Colbert’s Live Election Night: +500
Tony Bennett Celebrates 90: A Speck of Dust: +900
TO WIN THE EMMY FOR OUTSTANDING VARIETY SPECIAL WRITING
Not the White House Correspondents Dinner: -125
Louis CK: 2017: +150
Stephen Colbert’s Live Election Night: +900
70th Annual Tony Awards: +1500
Sarah Silverman: A Speck of Dust: +1500