The Emmys this year and the current TV landscape
By Jerrison Oracion, Senior Columnist
With another decade of TV about to end, we should all reflect on the things that have changed. In 2010, network TV and premium cable were dominant and streaming services were starting to emerge. Today, premium TV and streaming services are dominant—and the biggest shows right now air on those services. Shows are starting to obtain film quality because of their use of 4K cameras and “scope” widescreen presentation.
The Emmy Awards this year were interesting with no one hosting it this year (I thought that Homer Simpson was hosting it because it aired on Fox), and the winners were balanced. HBO swept up the awards again with the last season of Game of Thrones, Barry, Chernobyl, and unsurprisingly, Last Week Tonight is getting the big awards again. Netflix might sweep the awards up next year with the newest season of Stranger Things—which many people are saying is the best season of the show so far.
There were awards this year for Ozark, the miniseries about the Central Park 5 called When They See Us, and the interactive TV movie episode of Black Mirror, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch—which made history as the first interactive TV movie to get an Emmy award.
Amazon Prime Video swept the comedy category for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Fleabag, and RuPaul’s Drag Race surprisingly finally winning the Best Reality Show award. If you like to watch these shows, you have to either subscribe to the channel or get the streaming service that airs the show to watch it—shows today are scattered all around the place. It’s like back in the day, during the rise of HBO, when you had to get the channel if you wanted to watch The Sopranos.
With more streaming services being available in the next few months including Apple TV+, Disney+, and HBO Max, if you get every streaming service that is available today, it will cost the same as full cable, if not more. The Emmy commercials about streaming services looked epic—watching them was as exciting as watching the commercials in 1995 about the DVD being the future. Crave’s commercial about their streaming service having the most nominated shows this year is very convincing. I’d have to get Disney+ if I want to watch the shows that accompany The Avengers films.
After Netflix began offering original shows, the other entertainment companies made their own streaming services, causing Netflix to lose the rights to a big chunk of their content. If all of the popular content is removed from Netflix and they only have their original shows, it is pretty much just a TV channel. Out of all the shows that got awards this year, the only network show that got an award is Saturday Night Live. The (only) great things about network TV are the live shows, live sports, reality shows, and crime shows.
There is not a lot of hype for the dramas and comedies on network TV; many shows get cancelled each season. Although, Netflix has also cancelled many of their shows because of low ratings.
A new TV season has just begun and the amount of streaming services available offering new shows will determine the future of television.
