The Television Academy is changing up the Emmys rules and categories ahead of the 2023 Emmy Awards.
The organization announced a big change along with a series of new rules on Tuesday (December 20), which will see two categories being removed from the ceremony, and two new ones being added.
The category change comes to fix a big problem that the Academy was running into in recent years.
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The Emmys announced that they will be getting rid of the “Variety Talk” and “Variety Sketch” categories, via Variety.
Instead, there will be two new ones: Outstanding Talk Series, which includes shows focused on “unscripted interviews or panel discussions between a host/hosts and guest celebrities or personalities,” and Outstanding Scripted Variety Series, which is for “programs that are primarily scripted or feature loosely scripted improv and consist of discrete scenes, musical numbers, monologues, comedy stand-ups, sketches, etc.”
The creation of the categories helps alleviate the problem of the decline of sketch shows, and how to separate topical and news-oriented talk shows from more variety-centric programs.
Still, it’s not necessarily a total problem solver: as Variety points out, shows like The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” could fall under either category, as it has both unscripted interviews and scripted improv, musical numbers, monologues, comedy stand-ups and sketches.
Back in December of 2020, the organization announced that it would merge the two categories into one category, but after backlash, reversed the decision a few months later.
The 2023 Emmy nominations will be announced on July 12, 2023, with the ceremony happening sometime in September.
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