TV Academy finally blinks, tells vendors the Emmys are getting delayed this year

Tonight, in “Completely expected outcomes that the people in charge were, nevertheless, pretending might not happen” news: The 2023 Emmys are almost certainly going to be delayed.

This is per a new report from Variety, which states that vendors for the Emmys have been told by the TV Academy that the show’s broadcast will not be happening on the scheduled date of September 18 of this year. (Ditto the Creative Arts Emmys, which were scheduled for a week earlier.) The Academy, which has been holding on to that date because hey, what else are they going to do, presumably didn’t also tell the vendors “Because no one will show up, and that would be embarrassing,” although we can more-or-less infer.

The writing has been on the wall for the Emmys since the moment SAG-AFTRA went on strike earlier this month. The show might, possibly, have been able to go forward—under heavy protest and possible picketing—amidst the Writers Guilds strike. But there’s simply no way it can happen with all of television’s fanciest actors now also on strike, leaving national audiences to look at nothing but assembled directors and producers. And while it’s always possible the labor actions will be resolved before September, massive awards shows take a lot of pre-planning that can’t happen under this level of uncertainty.

As Variety notes, this is the first time the Emmys have been knocked out of their regular September resting point since, well, 9/11; that broadcast ended up airing in November, after being delayed a second time by the beginning of U.S. armed involvement in Afghanistan. Nothing so drastic here, although the delay may be longer: A previous Variety report suggested the earliest date for a re-do might be November, while Fox was reportedly pushing to bump the show to January of 2024, which would crowd into space typically taken up by film awards season. But, hey: Maybe it’ll give the Emmy voters more time to actually watch some TV.