Technology has accelerated change in just about every aspect of life, including TV. The Emmys are the exception.
The Emmy awards, the most esteemed prizes in television, will be handed out Monday in a star-studded ceremony, and Netflix is again on full display. After 14 primetime Emmy nominations last year and three wins, programs from the streaming-video service were nominated 31 times this year. And so quickly they came: "House of Cards" was nominated and awarded in its first season, and Netflix only just began its originals push in 2012 with "Lilyhammer."
Related links: Netflix originals snag 15 top Emmy nods Amazon's $100M 3Q original-show budget equals one Netflix series In online TV first, Netflix wins Emmy for drama directing Netflix won't even reveal 'House of Cards' audience numbers to show's creator But looking closer at the primetime Emmys -- and all the primetime Emmys, not just those in categories televised to millions on broadcast TV -- reveals that cable and online programming waited the same amount of time to get a major series nomination after eligibility, six years. And despite "broadband-friendly" categories like short form, Web-based winners have been scarce unless they're only competing in exclusively "interactive" categories. Scarcer still are any online winners that lack ties to a traditional TV company.
So despite rapid changes in television because of technology, and despite the fact that creators making shows online routinely extol the creative freedom even compared to cable, broadband-based shows aren't getting Emmy recognition any faster than cable did 20 years ago.
Monday's ceremony could change that, should Netflix emerge with its arms toppling with statuettes. But if the awards handed out so far are any indication, online TV and the Emmys still have a long way to go.
Rapid change and total freedomVideo viewing has changed substantially in just a few years. Netflix said its subscribers streamed 6.5 billion hours of video in the first three months of this year, up from 4 billion hours a year earlier. YouTube streams about 6 billion hours of video in a single month. Researcher Nielsen found that while viewing of live television has held steady, the average time an adult spends every day on a smartphone, a gaming console, a multimedia device like Apple TV or a computer has jumped by a third from two years ago. The lines are blurring, with "television" coming to mean any video and "TVs" coming to mean any screen.
With the movement of television to connected platforms and devices, creators behind online programming for routinely highlight the creative liberties that comes with it.
"We had total artistic freedom," said Wren Arthur, an executive producer of "Park Bench with Steve Buscemi" from AOL, a nominee for Outstanding Short-Form Nonfiction Program this year (though not a winner; ESPN won that category). Arthur was shooting a pilot for ABC at the same time as "Park Bench," a process she called "extraordinarily different."
"They know what they want, and they want it exactly the way they want it," she said. "One was completely regimented, and the other was an experiment."
