This thread was inspired by an oft-repeated comment I have seen in many show and other topic forums here in the soap opera niche of TWoP, to wit: "The Daytime Emmys are a joke."

So the challenge here is, how would you un-joke-ify them?

Clearly the process by which nominees are chosen, most especially, is broken. So, how would you fix it?

So, the questions I pose are twofold:

1. What, precisely, needs to be changed to make the Daytime Emmys respectable again?
2. How would you change it?

How would YOU run the Daytime Emmys?

I will start:

1. Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES WHATSOEVER would I allow the show to produced by Dick Clark Productions.

Is Dick Clark Productions still involved in awards shows? God help us.

I'm tempted to say they should just go to fan voting. Even though GH or DAYS would win most of the awards, at least you usually know what to expect.

I also never want to see a return to, "Random actor in a soon to premiere primetime show from the network stuck with the Emmys this year" telling us how much they love soaps, getting all kinds of face time, and acting like a fool. Things like, "I just love All My Generals! I can't get enough of Luke and Greenlee!"

IMHO, there are four problems with the Daytime Emmy process as currently set up:

1. YOU ONLY HAVE TO BE GOOD LESS THAN 1% OF THE TIME TO WIN.
This sounds like a horrible insult to the shows and actors in daytime drama, but it is actually, empirically true. A typical soap opera airs for approximately 260 hours over a year. Of that 260 hours, soaps, showrunners, and actors are rewarded for approximately 2 hours of work (the stuff that goes on their Emmy reels). Those two hours represent .007% of a show or a person's creative output for a year. .007%! The argument constantly being put forth to justify this travesty is that the 2 episodes submitted are "representative" of a show or a person's worth, but that's just not true. We all can point to cases where a show, actor, or other creative person stunk up the joint most of the year, but roused themselves to basic competence for the obligatory two episodes and scored a nom, or worse, a win. The "Best" award should be given to the show/person who maintained a consistent standard of excellence all year round.

2. THE PRENOMS REWARD ASS-KISSING AND MARKETING OVER ACTUAL TALENT
Of all the "innovations" rung in over the past few years to "reform" the Emmy process, this is the one that has turned out to be a complete fiasco. On paper, allowing one's peers and co-workers on your show, who can see your work all year round, to decide whether or not you met the standard of excellence that should be rewarded, is a fine and logical idea. In practice it has devolved into a horrific cross between some sort of sophomoric popularity contest and flat-out propaganda manipulated by the show's marketing department to push the latest hot story and/or overpaid talent. (Anybody got any better explanation for Michael Easton's presence on the prenom list?).

3. THE QUOTA SYSTEM LOCKS OUT EXCELLENT PERFORMERS AND LOCKS IN MEDIOCRE ONES
Once again, it was an idea that looked good on paper. Each show would have a strict quota of only 2 performers allowed to be nominated in any one category. This would keep one show from completely dominating the awards (cue the bitter jokes about the Daytime Emmys being "The Young & the Restless Fan Club Awards" back in the day), and let other deserving performers get some recognition. But what if one show was just so consistently top drawer and excellent that it DESERVED to dominate the awards? Why should Eric Braeden be shunted aside because the show only had room for Peter Bregman and Christian LeBlanc, who also put in excellent performances, and somebody had to draw the short straw? On the other side of the equation, this makes it possible for a performer to score a nomination when his/her work wasn't really up to snuff because their show needed to fill a slot. If Show A had three top-notch performers, but Show B only had one, it makes no sense for Show A to kick aside a deserving nominee and for Show B to elevate a non-deserving one. Worse, it turns the Daytime Emmys claim to "honor excellence" into a rather sick joke.

4. THE "BLUE RIBBON PANELS" ARE ANYTHING BUT
The panels that decide the final nominees bring to mind the old joke about, how if you are put on trial for a serious crime, to always opt for a judge trial over a jury one because, "Would you want to be judged by people too stupid to get out of jurty duty?" It's become clear over the years that the so-called "blue ribbon panels" are simply nothing more than whatever schmucks they could round up who would be willing to spend a weekend screening the nominees. (The panel system also feeds into the ridiculous 2-episode-submission nonsense, these people simply can't be arsed to put in the effort required to get a really good idea of how a show or actor performed over the course of the entire year).

So, after seeing where the system has so completely broken down, I offer two reforms to the system:

1. Eliminate the quota system. (This goes without saying).

2. Hand the nomination process over to the print and online soap opera press (model it on the nomination system for the Golden Globes). It's not a perfect system, but at least it's workable. The soap press watches daytime dramas all year round, they know who phones it in most of the time and who consistently hits the mark. Let them determine the nominees, and all the 2-eppies-for-the-Emmy-reel and "blue-ribbon-panel-that-can't-be-bothered-to-meet-more-than-once-a-year" nonsense falls off the map. Also, the soap press may be more likely to reward the work that actually goes on the screen rather than the ass-kissing and/or promotional shenanigans that go on behind it.

It's really 2 simple reforms. They wouldn't make the Daytime Emmys perfect (no awards show gets EVERYTHING right), but they'd be a damn sight better than the farce currently in place.

The Daytime Emmys are a hard thing to judge because there is such a wealth of episodes for each show and it is impossible for most people (aka judges) to watch and vote. Nominees should submit a "best-of" reel, not 2 episodes. I know it's more work, but if they want to win, they'll put in the effort.

That being said, I do agree with the press choosing the nominees. I also think they should get to put people into the correct categories. The fact is, Alicia Menhew (sorry for the bad spelling) from AMC and Bree Williamson from OLTL should be in the Lead Categories.

And as much as I love her, Liz Hubbard probably should be Supporting (although this past year she has done more than usual). Same with most of the Lead Nominees. They should call Lead what it is - Older Actress, but I guess that is not PC.

This is why the Daytime Emmys are outdated. I don't know the best fix - all the alternatives I hear have flaws. But, something needs to be done. As it stands now, they can't find a home (really, Soapnet won't even taken them???) and it may just go away. I think if it weren't for Oprah's presence, they might already be gone.

I don't think there will ever be a fix for the problem of Lead actors getting put into Supporting categories because of gamesmanship (their chances in Supporting are better). It's apparently just endemic to anything involving acting awards (I see the same thing all the time in the Golden Globes, the Oscars, and the primetime Emmys).



I suspect we are going to end up with some dumb thing where Oprah or GMA or some such show does a weeklong thing where they hand out the Daytime Emmys in between touting self-help books and (in GMA's case) reading off weather reports. It's seriously gotten that bad.