38th Annual Daytime Emmy Awares

[dwmckim]

After much wondering, speculating, and general hand-wringing over whether or not they'd be broadcast this year, CBS will indeed air the ceremony on June 19.

 

[Drtooth]

Sometimes it feels like there's no point to them anymore. There are, what, like 3 soaps left? There's so little left that actually deserves an award. If they had a Daytime Razzies, just to give one to Maury Povich and to see if he takes the hint, maybe... it seems like when the last soap gets kicked off of television for some lame filler that gets little or no viewers (Cough... CBS View knockoff cough), the rest of the Emmys should be absorbed into the technicals for the prime time awards.

 

[dwmckim]

Right now there's six network daytime soaps left (and this may soon be down to five as i have it on good authority that ABC is strongly looking at cancelling All My Children).

Daytime programming is comprised of several genres (childrens programming among them which is the main thing Muppet/Henson fans tune in for!) but for many years the focus and "big awards" have traditionally been the ones given in the daytime drama categories. The Daytime Emmys will always be relevant since there will always be daytime programming - but the ceremony itself has to adjust to the changing landscape. Last year's awards failed miserably at doing so especially in comparison with the year prior; many genres were swept aside with the creative arts awards and weren't even given proper due on air.

But not only may we be down another soap, but there are less on the air now compared to a year ago and hopefully there will be a better variety of programming types represented on air this year (read: i don't want to see SST given the shaft!) Most people that know me know that i am as much of a fan of One Life to Live as i am Muppets/Henson so i always joke that the Daytime Emmys is like my personal version of the Super Bowl where i load up with food and cheer on not one, but two areas of huge fandom and of course i'll be "rooting for my teams" this year. But while the soap awards excite me, i'm just as much tuning in to cheer for SST/Sid/Dino Train and i do not want to see them cheated for on-air recognition.

 

[Drtooth]

I'm not a huge soap fan by any stretch, but it's a really depressing state that such a strong genre is hurting... I really wish they'd use this as a bully pulpit to tell the fans to do whatever they can to perpetuate whatever they have left, be it angry letter writing campaigns.

I remember when LeVar Burton went on, after winning an award for Reading Rainbow, went on to say how they're losing funding and the show may disappear after a while without it. Now I don't know if he did get funding or not after that, but he got his message out.

Now more than ever do we need to get the message out that TV producers don't care about loyalty to fans so much as they care about getting everyone watching everything else who they aren't even guaranteed to get to watch their stuff. There are a lot of things on Daytime that deserve recognition and respect of awards... some need to be royally snubbed for being unoriginal, redundant, and representing the worst in humanity. Cough cough... Judge programming... cough cough.

The sad thing is, the soap isn't even getting replaced by worth while programming. Game shows are one thing, but...I mean, that CBS show of used to be on sitcom people that's a watered down clone of the View? Someone needs to get out there and say that TV producers don't care about you, they don't care about anyone, and they don't even care about the bottom line because that implies they want to spend and risk money. We get it... TV is becoming obsolete... but some of that is their own fault by pushing the niche market out the door and replacing it with shows so unoriginal no one on either side is watching.

it's happening with Kid's programming, it's happening with prime time programming, it's happening with soaps... I'm surprised we don't have nothing but infomercials by now.