2020 Emmy nominations reveal the other side of the streaming revolution

An Emmy award.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

Looking back, the 71st Primetime Emmys were the quiet before the storm. "[I]t feels like something is ending," The AV Club's Erik Adams wrote after the ceremony last September, noting that the "72nd edition of the awards will be the first that has to contend with the original programming of the Pluses and the Maxes and the Peacocks."

On Tuesday, the shift was confirmed: Of the 16 networks that notched more than 10 nominations for the 72nd ceremony, six were exclusively streaming services — an Emmy first — while Netflix topped the overall nominations for only the second time, with a record 160 nominations. There's no doubt that it's a streamer's world now, but with the 2020 Emmys' surprising contenders, improved diversity, and refreshingly competitive categories, if this is the new, then good riddance to the old.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Youssef is also one of only a small handful of Muslim Americans to have ever been recognized by the Television Academy, and part of an overall welcome, and overdue, trend toward improving diversity. Black actors, for example, dominated Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series (helped along by Octavia Spencer in Netflix's Self Made and Kerry Washington in Hulu's Little Fires Everywhere) while Billy Porter of Pose and Jeremy Pope of Hollywood added to Netflix's pot.

The famously redundant awards show also won't have a returning winner in either of its major categories, with Fleabag and Game of Thrones off the air. Could Outstanding Comedy go to Amazon Prime's The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel? Will the Outstanding Drama be Netflix's Ozark or The Crown? All seem like possibilities. It's exciting, a word that doesn't usually describe "the Emmys."

Appropriately, this year's awards ceremony will likely itself be "streamed," in lieu of a live event. It'd be a serendipitous twist: there couldn't be a more fitting way to pass the TV torch, finally, to the streamers.

Explore More
Jeva Lange

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.