Huge change coming to this year’s Emmy Awards

The head honcho at Fox Entertainment has dropped a major announcement about this year’s Emmy Awards.

The Emmy Awards are following in the footsteps of the Oscars.

Much like the 2019 Academy Awards, this year’s Emmy Awards are going to be host-free.

At the Television Critics Association’s 2019 summer tour, Fox Entertainment CEO Charlie Collier took the stage during his executive session to explain why Fox is moving forward without a host for this year’s awards show, which will stream exclusively on Foxtel on Monday, September 23.

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SNL stars Colin Jost and Michael Che hosted last year’s event.

“Our job is to access how we will elevate the program in the year we’re lucky enough to broadcast it. And what’s interesting about this year to me is how many amazing shows we’re saying goodbye to,” Collier explained.

“You have obviously Game of Thrones, our own Empire, Veep, The Big Bang Theory. And so — I’ve never worked on the Emmys before — but you really have to look at all the trade-offs. If you have a host and an opening number that’s 15 to 20 minutes you can’t use to salute the shows.”

Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage poses proudly with his statue at the 2018 Emmys. Picture: Valerie Macon/AFP

Collier revealed that originally Fox put together an internal list of who could host the Emmys. But when the idea was floated to honour so many beloved and ending shows, the network scraped that list and went in this new direction.

However, Collier admitted the increased ratings for this year’s host-free Oscars contribute to Fox’s decision.

“Obviously, that was a piece of information, like my last question, that we gathered, looked at very well and certainly to some degree paid attention to. But I think, gosh, this is a pretty unique year for some of America’s favourite shows,” Collier said.

But just because Fox’s take on the Emmys won’t have an MC and revolves around ended shows doesn’t mean it’s going to be as depressing as it sounds.

The Fox head noted that the awards show would have entertainment, an opening number and surprises. “In my first ever Emmys I’ve worked on I love that the producers are so thoughtfully approaching those choices. There will be many surprises. It will be entertaining,” Collier said.

The 71st Annual Primetime Emmy Awards will be broadcast live and exclusively on Foxtel’s FOX8 channel direct from Los Angeles on Monday September 23 at 10am

This article originally appeared on Decider and was reproduced with permission

Originally published as Huge change coming to this year’s Emmy Awards