This is the most dramatic podcast ever. And iHeartRadio podcast. Chris Harrison Lauren z Ema coming to you from the home office in Austin, Texas. Quite chilly Austin, Texas. And you know, if it's freezing as I'm looking out right now, I'm looking at our pool and there are still icebergs drifting in our pool. We're in kind of middle of Texas, so everywhere north of here is much much colder. As we were watching football this weekend, what was going on
in Buffalo, it was like thirty six below. People were bringing their own shovels of Kansas City.
Loved it.
I love watching well, I'm sure they were good, but it felt like watching adult snow day. I mean, you know me, I'm not always into watching the sports, and I certainly didn't watch all of the games, but like our kids are TCU right now, they're having snow days. I don't know, there's just something fun about the seasonal experience. And I don't mean that to make the light light of like any of the dangers.
Things are going great, like when you pipes aren't frozen, when you're not you know, if you have a nice fire and all that there's nothing better than a good cozy day. Yeah. And I liked.
Watching the dudes being dudes at the Buffalo game, like yes, like just laying in the snow together, drinking beers, just trudging through fans out there to support their team.
Digging their own like Barca loungers into the snow. And I love that. In Buffalo that for the first time, like really in the history of the NFL, they announced nobody has seats today, there are no seats. Just dig out and stand where you want to stand. It was kind of just first come, first serve wherever you can be. Just try to get in the stadium because there's it was just crazy how much snow fell up there and.
People were like trudging through it. I mean those videos even made their way to me. Well, we watched a little bit of the game. We also watched a little bit of the Emmys.
We watched all of the Emmies. It was, you know, it was a crazy night. As we get into the Emmys because obviously people have reached out to us to kind of ask our opinions because well, we have both been on the Emmy red carpet. Some of us have four Emmys, Lauren, and so it's something we really cared about because obviously it's the industry we are in, In the industry we love. The Emmys should have taken place a long time ago, but both unions, the writers actors
were on strike. So what should have happened in September the seventy fifth Emmys, this look back, this retrospective, and this celebration would have been fantastic in September. The fact that we just went through the Golden Globes, the Critics' Choice Awards, and within eight days we're having our third celebration, but not even really of the same year, because this is last year's Emmys. And on top of that, this weather pushed that Bill's football games. Not only do we
have one football game, we have two football games. Oh and by the way, whether you care or not, it's a big deal. The Iowa Caucus is going on. So there's more news than we are used to and now we're going to try and shoehorn the Emmys in. They didn't stand a chance.
It wasn't it was I mean, because yeah, that Buffalo the Bills game was not supposed to be Monday.
It was supposed to be last Saturday, but weather pushed it.
And then you had a major market, Philadelphia. The Eagles were playing right after that. That's a huge game.
I know the cast of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia posted from.
The Yeah, they be watching the people at the Emmys were not even caring about the Emmys. They were watching football on their phones.
And you could see some people when they would cut to the audience, you could see people on their phones and I was like, are they watching the football games?
Maybe?
I mean, it was even physically an empty theater. Yeah, like the theater wasn't full. There were a lot of empty chairs, and I was thinking, you know, usually with the word shows, they hire seat fillers if they have empty chairs.
Could they not even get seat fillers?
And well, they had a few because obviously Harrison Ford was in front of you know, Anthony Anderson's mom, which we'll talk about her in a little bit, but you know, Harrison Ford stuck around for a little bit. Then he went probably went backstage before Callista's big moment. And it was very interesting that the director, I could tell, had a really tough time shooting angles of the audience because it was so empty. It looked like Hollywood didn't even care about the Emmys.
Well, and we've gotten the ratings and I think just based on all that, we're not surprised.
Yeah, they were abysmal.
This is a new low. The headline from Deadline Hollywood is Emmy's sync to another historically low. Audience down twenty seven percent from twenty twenty two, So in twenty twenty two, it was a new low.
And by the way, I it was funny I read that article today in twenty twenty two, the big headline was Emmy's down twenty five percent. They sink to a new low. It is crazy that we have come out of the COVID pandemic where we finally can actually be together and celebrate, and it's going even further down the toilet.
Right.
It says it's a significant decrease from the previous all time lows. So that most recent all time low was less than six million people. Now it's down to about four so you lost an additional two million people.
I mean, it's rough.
The Awards show also was down more than thirty seven percent from the last time Emmy's Aaron on Fox, which is in twenty nineteen, so really really rough and it's just in just a few years, and of course the pandemic was a big part of it. But these awards shows have gone down. I actually didn't think the show itself was that bad.
It wasn't look Hollywood has an insatiable appetite to pat itself on the back and tell each other how great they are, so it's not going away the Oscars, the Globes, all that stuff. You're never going to stop Hollywood elites from celebrating each other. But with that said, I agree with Lauren. It was a good show. It was the seventy fifth anniversary, so it was also an important show, and the producers did a good job. I won't say
they did a great job. They did a good job of trying to celebrate history, going back and having these big reunions, the gatherings of cheers and good times.
If you didn't watch, what they did was it was the seventy fifth annual Emmy Awards, so they did some retrospectives looking back at the history of TV, and they reunited casts from some of the big shows. One thing I didn't understand was when they looked back at all of these significant moments in TV, and they like they.
Brought up nine to eleven.
Well it's I'm like, well, that's a news moment we're talking about, Like, yeah, you scripted and react.
If you're talking about the seventy five most influential moments in television, all seventy five are going to be news. I mean, you would say JFK being assassinated. You would say, I mean all those lading on the move. It would either be honestly sports or news. So it has to be TV moments of entertainment. It's weird to me, you know. And most of those, honestly are going to be the Mash Final Show, Cheers Final Show, the Miracle on Ice. So anyway, with all that said, they just seem to
miss the mark. Sometimes Anthony Anderson was the host. He did fine. He wasn't bad, he wasn't great, he did fine. The opening of the show, in my opinion, did not need to be fifteen minutes of Anthony Anderson singing and dancing. When they were referring to, for example, Miamivice, I would have loved to have seen the guys from Miamivice doing well.
It's the same issue I had with the Globes, which is I really don't think these shows need to be hosted.
I feel this way across all the awards.
This is nothing against Anthony Anderson.
Just no.
I actually I thought he was I mean, first of all, world's above Joe Coy.
But yes, the bar was set very long and he was given.
It his all.
I mean, at one point he put on that latex suit from American Horror Story. When Dylan McDermott was on stage, Anthony Anderson was working hard, he brought his mom out. And the thing is, they brought the mom out in this bit to jokingly cut people's speeches off. Yeah, and I'm thinking, but that's the problem. I would rather see her for Coolidge give her whole speech, and you just cut her off, and we don't need this much like.
Host time, all the other stars were like, oh my god, please make it stop. And it didn't stop. The only good news, babe, is that they quickly got that note they didn't and she didn't do it again.
Well right, yeah, and it because I mean, I don't want to miss Jennifer Coolidge thanking the Evil Gaze. It was so funny and brilliant and again, you know, then you had like Ioadebois from the bear who's getting up there to win, and she's literally saying, oh, they're telling me I only have forty five seconds.
I'm like, I don't want to be yelled at you.
Yeah, you know again, I want to see these people give their speeches. I mean, we have You've got the most talented people in the world up there. Iodebois won Quinta Brunson one and she's so funny and great, and luckily they kind of started letting these speeches play out more. But god, Nisi Nash's speech was hilaria when she thanked herself, that was incredible.
So can I ask you a question?
Yeah?
Have we so in the heyday, you know, when these things were tens of millions of people watching and they went very long, the things may have been the problem may have been long speeches. There were so many long acceptance speeches that that was a problem. Are we projecting this as still a problem And maybe the problem is we're not using these speeches anymore. Yeah, are we missing the mark? They've overcorrected or something.
They've gotten too worried about it, Like now I'm more worried about Anthony Anderson doing a twenty minute bizarre open and I need to get Jennifer Coolidge off the stage in twenty seconds.
Does the awards show need to be three hours? That's another question.
Well, they have twenty seven awards to hand out. We probably could have given Beef all eight awards just in one minute. The same guy got up and spoke twenty times. If you didn't see, by the way, it was just a celebration of Beef the Bear, A little Abbot Elementary sprinkled in in succession. That's it. That's the only four shows that exist in television. Oh and RuPaul's Dragways, which has now won fifty Emmys.
I don't think it needs to be three hours either. It doesn't what I mean three hours.
Banging out in two hours?
I remember, I'm not just say what's longer than I thought? Oh, football is longer than.
Well, the first time I hosted Miss America, it was still three hours on ABC and I was like, wow, that is that is a lot. And The Bachelor we started doing two hour episodes, which was pretty unheard of. You know, there was a moment and by the way, not to poo poo on all of it. There were some great moments going back and seeing you know the group from Cheers, but even then, it's like they should
have had more. And there were times when we did get some amazing people together from our history, Carol Burnett and all that, and I'm like, that's what I want to see more of. Give me more of that. But there was that moment where Sunny and Philadelphia the cast got out there and they were making fun of the point that they've been there for sixteen years and sixteen seasons and they've never been nominated for an Emmy.
Quality over quantity.
I think if that same show had been done in two hours, we would be like it was really great.
Like we just needed to cut some of the fat.
I mean, yeah, there were some I Marla Gibbs ninety two years old looked amazing. Collins, Oh, Joan Collins, Carol Burnett, there were some icons on.
Beautiful Joan Collins looked by the way. It was good to see the cast of Ally McBeal. Here's a funny story and again just why I love television. Ally McBeal was the show we went up against when The Bachelor premiered and everyone thought, you're never going to make it.
You're against this amazing show tour and to four so of Calista Flockhart and I loved Ally McBeal, and then later we went up against the West Wing and like all these shows that became so huge that came and went while we were still in the air, And I thought about Sonny and Philadelphia. Survivor has been nominated at least they were even nominated this year. I go back to The Bachelor. We've been on for twenty years. It's
never been nominated. I mean, you could jump up there and do the same thing that Sonny and Philadelphia did. It's amazing. And so it also goes to show how at the end of the day, truly unimportant these shows are. And let me ask you a question, which one do you think which statue means the most as far as dollars, Emmy, Globe, Oscar or Grammy.
Uh, you mean making more money for the person?
Yeah, Like what is like the Emmys In my opinion, don't move the needle. Nobody's going to go out and watch Ted Lasso or Succession. Those shows are heavy one, but like when the Oscars happen, there is a residual Oscar bounce typically.
Yeah, I mean I think that Emmys have more opportunity to do that now than ever before because of streaming, Like it used to be if you missed a show and then it went all these Emmys, well, I don't wait for next season right now.
I mean you and I.
After seeing Beef win all these awards, I'm like, why I didn't watch Beef? Maybe I should go watch it and it's available on fl But there's a lot of Emmys given out. I mean I have four. Like there's the Creative Arts Semis, there's the Daytime Emmys, there's a regular Emmys. There's a lot of Emmys, So I think
you have a little more brand dilution there. But yeah, I think that, uh, you know, they really had an opportunity here given that it was the seventy fifth Emmys, and I think the Globes did a better job of kind of shaking things up this year. I thought I saw more fun content from the Globes. They hired some like fun people to do their social media on the carpet and that kind of thing.
And when you.
Think about four million people, I mean that's that's like one episode of a TV show that people watch right now, And it would even be considered low for a random episode of a.
Television show for a live event that happens one series.
It is atrocious. I haven't seen the numbers. I was looking right as we came on. It didn't come on, but I'm going to guess football my guest drew twenty plus million viewers, so that you know, five x the Emmys. That is what both of these football games did individually.
Now, the Globes did have Taylor Swift, and can we talk about the power of Taylor Swift where you might be sick of it? No, but I saw all these tweets about how people are feeling upset for Jason Kelcey, and it was all these Swift He's being like, I didn't know who this man was a year ago, but now I feel sad for him and I care about him and how he's retiring because he's Taylor Swift's boyfriend's brother, and I totally feel the same way.
The guy's a Hall of Famer. I mean, he's gonna you know, he's one of the greatest to ever play the game.
I totally didn't know that. I didn't know he was Hall of Famer.
I just saw this video of him crying, and I'm like, oh, Travis's.
Brother, Travis, his little brother.
I also what saw guy say, you know, for anybody who's like coming at Taylor Swift about how they're annoyed about the shots of her at football games or whatever, he said, you know what's been cool for me is he said, for the first time my daughter has asked me about football.
Well, you know what. That was a response to a former coach who I actually really admire and I've met him. He's a wonderful guy. And I really think he got out over his skis on this. And I don't think he's older, so I don't think he understood the honey trap he was stepping into. Because Tony Dungee said, you know this, this Taylor Swift obsession is taking away from football, it's hurting the game, et cetera. And that gentleman you're talking about It was a response to that of like, Tony,
you're missing the point here. I'm sitting here with my daughter. The only reason she's watching is because of Taylor Swift. So Tony, I disagree. I don't get the hatred or the whatever vitriol. I think that's more of just a sign of the times of social media and all the like it's just cool to say something rebellious and dumb. I mean, what impact does she have? So for four seconds, you saw Taylor Swift the other night, who cares well, and we were like.
Okay, so you're showing eminem during the.
Uh yeah, Lions game is a Detroit guy like right? I mean what if I went to, like I remember a Cowboy game and I was there, and you know, they showed Ellen DeGeneres and George but she who cares like celebs love sports sports? I don't. I don't understand. There's I didn't miss one play or one interesting moment
of football because I saw Taylor Swift. And if somebody was like you or this little girl, if somebody got joy and found some love because they saw Taylor Swift and her Kansas City jersey or whatever, oh my god, Really that hurts you, Like you didn't miss anything. What could you really be mad at? So there were something I was really interested in last night, and it made me come grab one of your Emmy's. We happen to have four here in the house thanks to Lauren Zema.
But as they the winners were holding up, you could see there was something inscribed on the bottom of the Emmy. I've never noticed that, and I thought, well, maybe it's something sweet, maybe it's something poetic. Lauren happens to have her Emmy in hand right now, Babe. What does it say on the bottom of the Emmy?
There are rules with this emmy?
I didn't know. Okay, there are three rules the loss of owning an Emmy. It doesn't say that, but here's what it says. Number One, the Emmy Statuette is the property of and all rights are reserved by the Academy of Television, Arts and Sciences. Okay, I don't know if that means that they own my Emmy, but I guess they're saying the copyright of the Emy statuette. Number two, the Emmy Statuette may not be reproduced or used in any commercial manner unless otherwise permitted by the Academy.
Is Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah.
Number three, this one's confusing.
If a recipient or the recipient's air or successessor proposes to sell or otherwise dispose of the Emmy statuette, such persons shall be obligated to return the statuette to the Academy from which received, which will retain the same in storage in memory of the recipient.
So I don't know what that means. We need to consult a lawyer.
What it means is if these ever show up at a pawnshop, the Emmy organization has the right to go in there and take it and bring it home. And you're not going to see these things floating around on eBay or whatever being sold around.
By the way, Emmys aren't cheap. Now, I don't know if everybody has to buy their own Emmy. They do, yeah, I don't know, well do they because they always cut to the engraving station at the Oscars and the Emmys, and they show like footage on social after of the stars getting their Emmy engraved.
So do they have to have a credit card on hand?
Is they have to?
Because typically for like the Creative Arts and for all these other Emmys, it costs like a thousand dollars, right, how much soul money?
I know you've never won one. I know, I'm not fair. What is the Bachelor should have? No Emmys are five hundred dollars dollars?
So yes, at this point, I actually have not bought my fourth one yet.
I'm not sure if I'm going to. I don't know. Is it worth five hundred bucks?
Like you still are a winner of it, but at some point I'll spent two thousand dollars on Emmy statues, So yeah, does that apply?
Like is that only for little old me?
Or yeah? I don't know if that applies for the Primetime Emmys.
If the I don't know, Like last night, did the wonderful and talented Quinta Brunson have to like whip out her credit card at the engraving station?
I don't know. I want to find out. Now we know what it says in the bottom, but oh gosh, they are heavy. So oh, you know, what was You know, it was another weird moment last night?
What's it?
What was with the guy who won and he was chewing?
Oh?
Yes, what happened?
Yeah, I don't know. I thought it was a bit he was he won and then he came up and he was chewing on like a look like some caramel or something, because he was like he was really kept, was like beef jerky, And I thought, okay, he's going to make a joke about this, like, oh, I look, I took a bite of my hogiy because I didn't think I was going to win, and he kept like kind of chewing and he choked down something, and then he gave his speech and it was so bizarre.
He read his speech, which was a wrap off of his phone, and you could see his handshaking, and I fell back because he was clearly so nervous. The speech was well written and cute. I don't love reading important speeches and toasts and that kind of thing off a phone. I think that's the time when you bring a piece of paper the phone for some reason, no matter how modern the technology gets. I know we all own a phone, but there's something because I think it just seems like
instantly juvenile or instantly like you don't really care. Maybe it's because when someone's looking at their phone, we think they're not listening to us, Like you got to print it out on a piece of paper, I agree, And then your phone's locking and you're scrolling, you're using the face side on the Emmys, and it's funny.
I agree. A piece of paper for some reason, feels more intimate.
You know, one good moment from the Emmys, Tina Fay and Amy Pohler reuniting.
Loved that.
Of course, then you have everybody saying have them host it if they wanted to, they would, they don't want to take it on.
I think our point from the Golden Globes is the best. It's like, use those people like honestly. And again this no offense to Anthony Anderson, but if you had just used all these great casts over seventy five years of great television to host essentially the show that would have been did that's all you needed? That's it? I think that would have been a great way to do it. And I love seeing because I love old television. I
saw some great television. I grew up with things I love now and I love I do like seeing people celebrated because you and I both know how hard television is. And I'll get on a little soapbox here about even my Bachelor family, how difficult it is to make TV. To get a show bought, sold and put on the air. The set, decks, art department, lighting, directors, fautogs, audio, you know, you name it are working crazy hours. It is a
really tough yet rewarding business. And it's a passion. And it's very rare that you have a business that is an art that is a passion. And so I do like watching the celebration because I respect what all these people do. It takes a lot of work, not just the big stars that we love, but a lot of people behind the scenes. You know, the writers from Succession. I think the guy that wrote that unbelievably beautiful episode when the dad dies, and how well that was written
and how well it was acted. When all that comes together, it doesn't get any better. And you and I were just talking about how triggering the Succession theme song is. You just hear the theme song when they won an award and you're like, oh, it just took you to a dark, awesome place. And I miss that show already. So I I know we can bag on it and the ratings suck and all that stuff, but I still want to say I love celebrating TV. I love this business, and I'm glad we're still doing it.
You know why I'm so hard on it because I want it to be good.
Yeah, you know that's what I love.
It could be good.
And I saw several people sharing videos like, oh, people don't accept awards like this anymore, Like the time when Julia Louis Dreyfus was winning for VEEP and she brought Tony Hale up with her and they like kind of did a bit from the show.
For her speech.
Yeah, we got to get like, give those moments time. Let people have fun again and get back to the fun of it. I hope that if award shows are going to change anything, I hope it's that get back to some of the fun. It doesn't have to be so preachy. People don't want to be preached at. They want to enjoy and allow the actors a little time to do that. You know, don't cut their speeches off led Jennifer Coolidge, thank the Evil Case.
As a producer, anytime that you feel that you or your show is talking down to the fans to America, just stop cut it, get back to fun, get back to entertaining. We love Hollywood. We want to love Hollywood. I think that's the better statement. We want to love you. Help us help you. And speaking of help us, help you, Thank you for listening. We love talking to you each and every time we get the honor to do this.
Truly appreciate it, and we will do it again next time because we have a lot more to talk about. Thanks for listening. Follow us on Instagram at the most dramatic pod ever and make sure to write us a review and leave us five stars. I'll talk to you next time.