The 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards

Inside 2020's Virtual Emmys

What viewers can expect to see and what’s really going on behind the scenes in the strangest Emmy awards ever.

The Show Just Goes On

The 72nd Primetime Emmys will not look like the Emmys you’re used to seeing. This may be a very good thing, indeed, given that last year’s drew a dwindling audience and left Academy members and broadcast executives near apoplectic about the future of the telecast.

There is reason to watch this year, not just because the nomination process has been successfully opened up to new diversity in nominations, but because the show will be balancing on a knife’s edge of disaster during its entire three hour run.

Last Year’s Ratings for the Emmys Were the Worst Ever

Last year, in pre-Covid 2019, the 71st Emmy awards were the least-watched Emmys ever. A tiny bit of that could be explained by the fact that they were on Fox, a network that still doesn’t deliver the numbers that ABC, CBS and NBC do when they have the show (it rotates between the Big Four every year). Another sliver of blame could go to the fact that there was no host. Or that they had to compete against Sunday Night…