As viewing patterns have shifted dramatically over the past two decades, fragmenting audiences and delaying viewing in what we characterize as a post-network era, the televised award show has increased in value for broadcast networks. Live events work against delays, provide the possibility for social media buzz, and speak to a presumed broad audience that is becoming increasingly more difficult to capture with traditional programming. This has made the relative value of award shows increase, both for major awards (the Oscars, the Emmys, the Grammys) in respective media and lesser award shows that now have greater value than when they were perceived as illegitimate offshoots of the more reputable awards in said medium (such as the American Music Awards and the Billboard Music Awards, which are based on fan voting and record sales respectively).

Outside of isolated moments like Ellen Degeneres’ “Oscar Selfie,” however, major award shows in film and television have not necessarily changed their approach in light of their new value in a convergent media era, remaining largely the same in terms of flow and structure. By comparison, the Grammy Awards have gone through a tremendous overhaul, dramatically altering the number of awards presented during the televised ceremony, and shifting to a more substantial number of performances. While the presence of performances has always been a key draw for the Grammy Awards, the increase in the number of performances—going from 8 in 2004 to 20 in 2014—has shifted the ceremony further toward the live event spectacle that cuts through the challenges of broadcast television so effectively in the current moment. CBS has even built on its success with a yearly concert special timed to the Grammy nominations in December, announcing the nominees for “Album of the Year” and other major categories as part of a concert “preview”—this year with a holiday theme—of the January or February ceremony before releasing the full list.

If the changes to the Grammy ceremony itself reflect shifts in audience viewing patterns within traditional media, the strategy the Recording Academy is using to reveal this year’s nominees represents a more dramatic move away from traditional media. The release of award nominations has historically been handled through early-morning press conferences, wherein professionals within the respective field teams up with the Academy president to reveal major nominations ahead of the release of the full list of nominees shortly after. These take place at roughly 5:30am in Los Angeles, a time chosen in order to coordinate with the morning shows on the East Coast, with the nominations typically simulcast by one or more of them. It is an old tradition that has adjusted to include livestreaming, and that the Grammys has shifted to Primetime in recent years, but it remains predominantly tethered to an old media stalwart.

Congrats to @theGRAMMYs Song Of The Year noms @Meghan_Trainor, @sia, @taylorswift13, @samsmithworld & @hozier! <3 https://t.co/xqncX3LrSb

— Troye Sivan (@troyesivan) December 5, 2014

This year, however, the Recording Academy partnered with Twitter to reveal the majority of the nominees for this year’s awards one-by-one over the course of the day: although anchored by nominees Ed Sheeran and Pharrell on CBS This Morning and the Album of the Year reveal on the CBS nominations special, therefore retaining a tie to traditional broadcast environments, the partnership with Twitter is where the vast majority of discourse around the awards circulated today. Whereas all award shows are now actively engaged in social media, tweeting congratulations to nominees in hopes of retweets and further follows, the Grammys are not simply tweeting the nominees from their own account (which has 1.7 million followers): instead, they have parceled out the categories among a number of former winners or contemporaries in respective categories (Vampire Weekend, Joy Williams, Mark Ronson), prominent YouTube stars with musical aspirations and strong social media followings (Troye Silvan), syndicated entertainment shows or personalities (Ryan Seacrest, Access Hollywood, The Insider), and perennial Grammys host LL Cool J, among others—I’ve collected a Storify of most of them here. With most using the integrated video function on Twitter, and with each video including a plug for the Emmy Award ceremony on CBS in February, the videos serve to make the nominations themselves visible to a broader audience, suggesting a careful curation of “presenters” and potential audiences across various genres.

It’s a decision that has confounded the traditional way nominations are covered in the entertainment industry: whereas journalists can typically speak to narratives in the awards, sites are now forced to gradually collect and collate information, building narratives—who has the most nominations, who was snubbed in certain categories—on the fly with only limited perspective until the majority of nominees (all but album of the year) were finally posted around 2pm ET. Beyoncé’s single announced nomination early in the day allowed her to pass Dolly Parton to become the most nominated female artist of all time, but anyone who ran that story needed to update it to reflect her final nomination count, which will remain unclear until tonight’s broadcast. Sam Smith tweeted about earning four nominations before getting out of bed, but that number increased shortly after, necessitating another message updating the number to five.

The presence of social media has privileged live events because they are something people “talk about,” and have the potential to spread beyond their initial viewing audience as online buzz pushes people to tune in. In this case, the Grammys are tapping into the same potential for social media to spread word about the nominations, creating an environment where it is impossible for anyone engaged with entertainment journalists or musicians on Twitter to avoid Grammys reporting over the course of the day as artists and outlets livetweet their reactions to the nominations rollout. Whereas “Oscar Nominations Morning” has become a tradition in the context of social media, with Twitter and other social media conversations focused on what is considered a major industry event, the Grammys have sought to claim an entire day, an effort that shows how the adoption of social media is influencing established spaces of industry practice.

It is also an additional reminder that while who wins or is nominated for awards remains a key space of analysis for engaging with the place of awards in media industries and in culture more broadly, the process by which those nominees are determined or announced is equally central to the award show’s place within contemporary media studies.

Agnosticism is, however. This year’s Emmy nominations demonstrate that notions of television quality are category agnostic, in that the same performers or series are likely to garner nominations even if they show up in a fundamentally different category than they appeared in previously, or if they emerge in a category that actively takes advantage of the vagaries of the Emmy nominations system. Whereas the rules governing Emmy Award categories—as I’ve discussed previously—can fundamentally shape who is nominated in meaningful ways, this year also reveals the inherent slipperiness of those categories in the midst of an increasingly competitive environment.

This slipperiness is not new—Downton Abbey has competed for both Miniseries and Drama Series, and the rise of the half-hour “dramedy” has inherently called into question the broad distinction between comedy and drama operating in the Emmy nominations process. But this year there is a much larger collection of series straddling these lines. True Detective, a close-ended miniseries that will return for a second stand-alone season, is nominated for Outstanding Drama Series, while Fargo—also a close-ended miniseries that could return for a second stand-alone season—is competing in Outstanding Miniseries (with American Horror Story, which brought this emergent television form into the Emmy conversation two years ago). Orange is the New Black competed as a Drama at the Screen Actors Guild and the Golden Globes earlier this year, but is nominated as a Comedy at the Emmys (which is also competed as for the Writers’ Guild Awards). Shameless, which competed as a drama for three seasons, moved to Comedy and garnered William H. Macy his first nomination in a less crowded lead actor category. The Outstanding Miniseries category includes only one program we could unequivocally consider a miniseries, with the other five nominees each slotting into one category vagary—a short final season (Treme), canceled after a single season (The White Queen), a short British season (Luther)—or another.

This has typically been framed as “category fraud,” but such a term presumes there are explicit rules being broken, or that networks or channels making these choices are doing something “wrong.” While any categorization has to pass Academy scrutiny—Shameless had to apply for the change, for example—there is no real basis on which the Academy could refuse these distinctions. There is no rule against Netflix using the various other awards earlier in the year to test out how Orange Is The New Black competes as both a Drama and a Comedy before making a final decision. There is no rule against HBO taking True Detective out of the Miniseries category to maximize the channel’s chances of winning its first Drama Series Emmy since The Sopranos and leave the Movie/Miniseries field more open for Ryan Murphy’s The Normal Heart. While there are undoubtedly limits to a network or channel’s ability to redefine programming with a distinct generic or formal identity, this year reveals that those limits have yet to be reached.

In truth, the Emmys have always been slightly category agnostic. History has shown voters will find certain actors or certain shows anywhere regardless of the category, nominated because of who they are more than because their performance was particularly well-liked—such “name-only” nominations may be primarily speculation (we cannot know for certain what Emmy voters did or did not watch), but Kristen Wiig’s nomination for her role in IFC’s absurdist miniseries Spoils of Babylon stands out as a case of voters finding Wiig—nominated five years in a row for her work on Saturday Night Live—in a different category rather than finding Spoils of Babylon (which only garnered a nomination for Theme Music otherwise).

But whereas those decisions only threaten to reveal that Emmy voters might not consider the quality of performance in relation to the category as the primary factor in their decision-making, a long-ago accepted reality of industry awards more broadly, these more recent developments have thrown into question the Academy’s entire structuring of the Emmy nominating process. It is a process that forces categorization without enforcing particular definitions of those categories, meaning that it fundamentally encourages discursive reworking of genre or formal identities while also forcing that discursive work to latch onto specific categories—Comedy or Drama, Series or Miniseries—that may or may not logically describe the programming in question.

The consequences of this are minimal: I may believe Orange is the New Black is a drama, but that “fraud” does not alter my relationship to the series in any meaningful way. Although I will continue to argue for the Emmys as a meaningful discursive space for engaging in questions of identity and in understandings of larger trends in how television value is determined, the slipperiness of the Emmy categories is—like coverage of prominent snubs—more a point of consternation than a point of meaningful contention.

Nonetheless, however, the sheer volume of categorical question marks this year is notable. Although the nominations suggest voters are category agnostic, the very existence of categorical distinctions suggests the Academy itself is not. And while it’s hard to imagine an Emmys without distinctions between comedy and drama, or between series and miniseries, the slippery nature of those terms raises the question of whether or not the Emmys will adapt either in conjunction with or in opposition to the discursive reframing of those categories by its members’ voting patterns or the networks and channels actively taking advantage of a malleable system.

However, while it would be ill advised to overemphasize the importance of the Emmy Awards, this year’s nominations have been identified as a bellwether moment for Netflix’s original content and “Internet television” in general. The New York Times headlined its Emmys report with the innocuous “Netflix Does Well in 2013 Primetime Emmy Nominations.” Variety went with “Emmys Recognize Digital Age as Netflix Crashes The Party.” They’re both headlines that read as though they were written in advance, a clear narrative for journalists to latch onto to sell this year’s Emmy nominations as “important,” knowing Netflix was likely to compete with House of Cards and Arrested Development—House of Cards proved the big winner, earning nominations for Outstanding Drama Series, Lead Actor in a Drama Series, and Lead Actress in a Drama Series. Before the nominations were even announced, Academy chair Bruce Rosenblum acknowledged this narrative, citing the usual boilerplate about television changing into a multi-platform experience in his introduction to the live nominations announcement.

While acknowledging that Netflix’s rise is noteworthy, I reject its ties to the narrative of online television for two reasons. First and foremost, it is meaningful that the series Netflix submitted for consideration—which also included Hemlock Grove, and which earned a total of 14 nominations—are in no significant way a departure from traditional forms of television content. House of Cards is a premium cable drama series being distributed by Netflix; Arrested Development is a broadcast comedy turned premium cable comedy being distributed by Netflix. While there is clear innovation in terms of how these shows are reaching audiences, and I’ll acknowledge that Arrested Development’s puzzle-like structure is uniquely suited to that distribution model, we’re still considering series that would be strikingly familiar to Emmy voters.

These are not nominations for webseries like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, competing in categories specifically designed for web-based content. Julia Stiles was not nominated as Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Blue, a webseries distributed through the FOX-owned WIGS YouTube channel. There was actually a “webseries” nominated in a non-special class category: Machinima’s Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn earned a nomination for Outstanding Main Title Sequence, a nomination that oddly enough isn’t mentioned by Variety or The New York Times. Although I understand why Netflix is garnering the attention, to suggest that the Emmys are recognizing the digital age based on a showy drama series starring Kevin Spacey and produced by David Fincher, or a comedy series that was nominated for three-consecutive years in its previous life on broadcast, is to suggest that the Emmys simply acknowledging you can access the medium of television online outside of special class categories is itself remarkable. This seems like a low bar, and one that obscures the range of diverse and innovative forms being developed in an online space, and being mostly ignored by the Academy.

The other caveat necessary when considering the impact of Netflix’s nominations is that its distinct mode of distribution would have been erased for many Emmy voters. Netflix sent out screener DVDs of both House of Cards and Arrested Development to Emmy voters, meaning they never had to confront their status as “internet television” as they sampled series submitted for consideration. Additionally, online screening options have been available from networks like FOX or NBC for a number of years, which means that more technologically savvy Emmy voters are already used to streaming television (thereby erasing the only significant sense of difference tied to the Netflix series). While we can read the narrative of the Emmys embracing online television based on the basic fact of their nominations, the actual process through which Netflix earned those nominations did not necessarily carry the same narrative.

Comparisons have been drawn between Netflix’s breakthrough and that of premium and basic cable channels, which are still establishing “firsts”: Louie, for instance, is the first basic cable comedy to earn a nomination for Outstanding Comedy Series. However, as the difference between forms of distribution continues to collapse—especially for Emmy voters who receive DVDs or online streams stripped of commercials—we are no longer in an era where distribution is in and of itself a stigma facing television programs that otherwise tick off the Emmy boxes. Rather, the Emmys are a battle between brands as individual networks and channels seek to associate themselves with the prestige necessary to earn an Emmy nomination. Netflix didn’t earn Emmy nominations by stressing its sense of difference, but rather by erasing that difference, developing series that matched contemporary, popular conceptions of what qualifies as television prestige.

It is hard for me to accept this as a bellwether moment for online television when Netflix’s success is based on their ability to disassociate themselves with the notion of online television. Their success was not in breaking down barriers for new forms of distribution, but in finding a way to successfully convince Emmy voters those barriers did not apply to them. For evidence of this, one need look no further than the official “Facts and Figures” document released by the TV Academy: despite all this discussion about online television, Netflix is categorized alongside AMC and HBO as a cable channel despite the existence of a broadband category, which is exactly what Netflix intended and the narrative we should be taking away from these nominations.

The disparity is a source of a great deal of online outrage given the reputation of Louie—which some expected had a chance to break through—and Parks and Recreation—which was nominated last year—among both critics and the people who follow them. However, it reveals a consistent tension between the part and the whole when it comes to evaluating television in this capacity. While the writers who decide the nominations in this category are pushed to focus on individual segments, those nominating series or performers are supposed to be focusing on entire seasons; of course, this requires them to have seen entire seasons. It’s no secret that most Emmy voters don’t watch as much television as critics or other engaged viewers, which often leads to presumptions that they don’t actually bother watching anything at all.

However, let’s give the Emmy voters a bit more credit: instead of watching nothing, what if they watch the episodes provided for them? At this stage in the race, networks send screeners to Emmy voters, but they usually only send a representative sample, selecting a handful of episodes—while networks have sent out entire seasons before (which helped DirecTV break into the Emmy race with Friday Night Lights), generally speaking even the more diligent Emmy voters who sit down to watch the material sent to them will only see a sliver of the seasons under consideration.

On this note, allow me to float a theory regarding the big story of this year’s awards, which is PBS’ Downton Abbey dominating the Drama Series categories. I discussed the series’ problematic definition as a Miniseries during last year’s awards (a discussion we could have again regarding FX’s category fraud with American Horror Story), and PBS managed a stunning collection of nominations moving into the main race, including six acting nominations (most among Drama Series), Writing, Directing, and a nomination in Outstanding Drama Series (knocking off the only commercial broadcast series in contention, CBS’ The Good Wife). While many predicted the series to break into the race after its success last year and its increased profile in season two, supporting nominations for Mr. Bates, Mr. Carson, and Anna were never part of the conversation.

For me, there are two factors to consider here. First, while the series is now in its proper category, there’s a certain degree of genius in PBS’ accidental Emmy gamesmanship: by launching first in the safety of Miniseries, Downton took advantage of the prestigious but sparse nature of the Movie/Miniseries categories, gaining considerable profile in “high-class” categories before trying to break into the series race. While shows like Mad Men had to share the Drama Series narrative with shows like Friday Night Lights and Boardwalk Empire last year, Downton swept Outstanding Miniseries/Movie and the attached writing and directing categories despite strong competition from the HBO machine and Mildred Pierce.

However, more importantly, PBS treated Downton like a Miniseries even while submitting it in the Drama Series category. They only submitted a single episode for consideration in Writing/Directing—the season-ending Christmas special that brought the season’s storylines to a romantic and tragic conclusion respectively— where other series submit 8-10. However, they simultaneously sent the entire season to Emmy voters, meaning that those who desired to consume the whole series could do so (more quickly than with longer runs for shows like Mad Men or Homeland). Its ability to be both easily reduced and easily consumed makes for a strong combination, and it seems to have worked: the presence of Michelle Dockery—prominent in the Christmas Special—over Oscar nominee Elizabeth McGovern (who was nominated last year), and the dual nominations for Brendan Coyle—whose Mr. Bates was wrongfully convicted of Murder in the episode—and Joanne Froggatt—playing his wife—would both suggest that the Christmas Special was at the forefront of voters’ minds when they cast their ballots, meaning that voters either started at the end or made it there eventually.

I raise this point not to cast aspersions on Downton Abbey’s nominations—although my punny title may betray my thoughts on the series’ second season—so much as to understand the context in which they appear in such number. While some could suggest its presence in these categories as a win for populist, non-commercial television, that its reputation was born in the highbrow Movie/Miniseries category frames its presence here very differently. Additionally, it is a presence that could very well be framed by a single episode, either as a standalone installment or an emphatic end note to a short-run season viewed in its entirety.

At this point in the race, the Emmy Awards become all about selection: actors and actresses submit a single episode of exemplary work (which is aired in its entirety for Lead Acting nominees and edited into only scenes featuring the nominee in Supporting), while series submit three sets of two episodes with each Emmy voter receiving one of the three at random. While this does mean that no show is ever judged based on an entire season, and no actor is ever considered based on a larger body of work, it does mean that Downton’s focus on a single episode or an entire season is no longer so easy to control—whether they have three sets of two episodes that can equally wow voters now becomes the question of the hour.

[For more analysis of the awards, see News for TV Majors’ Roundup post.]

However, behind every award show is an extensive process wherein nominations are determined and winners are chosen—in other words, we can distinguish between the “televised award show” as a media event and “entertainment awards” as a semi-transparent process. This process eventually becomes a media event when the nominations and winners are announced, but otherwise it remains a niche point of interest.

This is not to say it is invisible. The process behind the Academy Awards has been particularly visible in recent years, with Harvey Weinstein helping usher in a new era of competitive campaigining and numerous websites popping up to cover the “race for Oscar” by engaging in meta-discourse with “For Your Consideration” campaigns launched in the trades. Such sites make visible the efforts of studio executives, agents, and other industry players to campaign on behalf of particular films, or particular performers, taking discourse that might remain within industry channels and sharing it with communities of readers who follow the race as amateur prognosticators or curious bystanders.

However, while sites like Sasha Stone’s Awards Daily or Tom O’Neill’s Gold Derby—which expands beyond film to cover awards in Theater, Television, and Music—have built a niche covering entertainment awards long before they enter into mainstream culture, the ongoing campaign surrounding the 2012 Emmy Awards has expanded into popular sites such as Deadline and Entertainment Weekly sooner than ever before. Mirroring an existing trend at Gold Derby, both EW—through their “Emmy Watch” feature—and Deadline—through AwardsLine coverage—have turned over their digital pages to interviews with key Emmy contenders, offering a platform to extend their campaigns for a nomination and an eventual victory.

It is common for entertainment sites to predict potential nominees, or for critics to offer their own personal choices if they had an Emmy ballot; doing so engages with readers who have their own opinions, tapping into cultural and critical hierarchies that stir debate and, subsequently, page views. However, the recent trends at Gold Derby, EW and Deadline expand beyond this meta-discourse into becoming part of the discourse of FYC campaigning. This isn’t EW‘s Ken Tucker or Deadline‘s Nellie Andreeva offering their perspective on the Emmy Awards: this is two publications choosing to allow the pages of their websites to become nearly identical in function to the “FYC” ads appearing in Variety or The Hollywood Reporter.

In other words, to take EW‘s “Emmy Watch” feature as an example, the audience here isn’t the casual reader of Entertainment Weekly looking for the latest entertainment news, but rather the Emmy voters who could potentially nominate an actress like Revenge‘s Madeline Stowe—who of course hasn’t even considered what episode she’d submit, lest she appear cocky—for an Emmy award. While the expanding audience for online coverage of television news and reviews means these interviews are not exclusively valuable to voters, as I wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to read Aaron Paul discussing a standout moment in Breaking Bad‘s fourth season, the context EW places them in seem tailored to the elites who make the decisions rather than the audience who watches the awards from home.

Each “Emmy Watch” post opens with the following spiel:

“Between now and June 28, the deadline for Emmy voters to return nomination ballots, EW.com is running a series called Emmy Watch, featuring highlight clips and interviews with actors, producers, and writers whom EW TV critic Ken Tucker has on his wish list for the nominations announcement on July 19.”

While EW ties the feature to a critics’ wish list, the inclusion of the voting deadline seems like unnecessary information for casual readers, designed instead to ensure voters who land on the post are given this key reminder. Indeed, stopping the series before June 28^th doesn’t make sense unless the goal is to directly influence the voting process: while speculation has value up until the July 19^th announcement, active campaigning has an earlier expiration date.

Rather than informing their readers, these pieces serve the interests of agents/publicists—who, from personal conversations I’ve had with journalists, actively seek outlets to promote their clients’ Emmy aspirations—and networks searching for visibility within crowded ballots.[1] Why is EW willing to become an outlet for what amount to puff-pieces designed to promote specific contenders? It’s likely the same reason Deadline is producing six AwardsLine print editions in the buildup to the Emmy Awards—in addition to their online coverage—that award voters can have sent directly to their door for free: by producing content related to the race for Emmy nominations and eventually an Emmy victory, and by explicitly aiming that content toward Emmy voters, publications have a better chance of drawing the “FYC” advertising dollars being spent by the networks.

Gold Derby has been following this model for a number of years, but the trend’s expansion into major publications like EW and Deadline raises new questions about entertainment journalism’s relationship with the “For Your Consideration” process. While this may present a new frontier for advertising revenues, allowing these publications to continue momentum from the Academy Award “FYC” process earlier in the year, the willingness of these publications to generate content strategies consciously designed to better facilitate those revenues casts aspersions on their independence from the industry they cover.