Awards Circuit Column: Amazon can give the Emmys a new home, but it can’t fix category drama or solve problems buried in the voting process. Spoiler alert: Moving to streaming isn’t enough to fix award show problems. Mariska Hargitay closed the 78th Emmys on Monday night from the Peacock Theater, and the ceremony she sent off may be the last of its kind.
Since 1949, the Emmys have belonged to broadcast television. As Variety exclusively reported, the Television Academy is in advanced talks to move the show to Amazon Prime Video, taking the Emmys off broadcast television for the first time in history. TV Academy Chair Cris Abrego said only that “conversations are continuing.” This move would drop the Emmys into the same territory as the Oscars and SAG-AFTRA’s Actor Awards (the former heading to YouTube in 2029, the latter already on Netflix).
Viewers will now require a subscription to tune in. Is that good or a bad thing? Under the most recent eight-year deal, struck in 2018, the networks paid just over $8 million a year for the rights to host the Emmys.
Last year, that left CBS cutting an eight-figure check to stage a night that belonged to its streaming rivals. The 2025 telecast drew 7.59 million viewers, the best Emmy number since 2021. HBO Max, Apple TV and Netflix dominated the evening, while CBS took home a single one for the now-canceled “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” A tradition built on equity among the TV networks can turn into an expensive ritual that benefits platform competitors — and highlights how an individual distributor’s content failed to resonate.
On paper, the Academy’s case for a single owner is a strong one. If you hand the Emmys to a platform that knows it will have them year after year, that platform has every reason to invest in the show, promote it and figure out what actually works. Under the “wheel” system, a network could pour money into a great telecast and then gift the audience it built to a rival the following fall.
The Emmys never had the room to evolve in this way. One year is barely enough time to find the bathrooms at the Peacock Theater, let alone build an audience around a new idea. I wonder if the Academy remembers what happened the last time one company took control?
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