‘THE Sopranos” did a whole lot more than rack up a slew of Emmy nominations this year.
It whacked the Emmys’ whole system of picking its winners.
After the groundbreaking, first season of “The Sopranos” was snubbed at last year’s Emmys, the majority of media, viewers and members of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences wondered how the hottest and highest praised show in years was robbed.
Emmy voters had been complaining for a long time that the system of picking winners – using expert panels – was outdated.
But it “The Sopranos” that finally pushed the Academy to democratize the selection process.
Academy officials decided it was time to find out why a show the majority of its members wanted to win, didn’t.
“Following last year’s [Emmy telecast] there just seemed to be a greater sense of people disconnected from the outcome, or willing to be critical of the outcome,” Meryl Marshall, chairwoman of ATAS told The Post.
“It was a further indication that they hadn’t participated in the voting process and that really required us to take some significant steps.”
Until now, winners were chosen by a blue ribbon panel of judges who spent a weekend each summer locked up in a Los Angeles hotel, forced to watch video tapes of every show or actor nominated.
To make sure nobody snoozed on the job, the rooms where the voters watched the video tapes were rigged with cameras, “Big Brother” style, so that other Academy members could watch them.
This year, judges were allowed to watch videotapes of the nominees at home. Still voters had to sign an affidavit swearing they watched every second, implausible as they may sound.
But the number of voters almost doubled from last year – more than 3,000 Academy members voted up from about 1,200, Marshall said.
Basically the problem seems to have been that potential voters in other parts of the country outside of California, did not have the time to pick up and fly to L.A. and spend two days in a hotel screening video tapes.
“There’s no question that the votes used to only represent those people who had the time on a weekend in August to be in Los Angeles and that was a self-limiting process,” Marshall said.
Marshall downplays the impact “The Sopranos” had on the decision to revamp the Emmy’s voting policy.
Instead, she points out that because people could vote from home, this year’s winners are probably a much fairer representation of entertainment industry professionals from across the U.S., rather the choices of a group of people who tended to all live in Los Angeles.