The headline says “literally snubbing Tamron Hall” because I didn’t think I should write “screwing” up there.
But the Daytime Emmys really made huge mistakes Friday night. The result was ratings lower than s soap opera: just 2.3 million people watched the show on CBS from 8 to 10pm. A disaster.
There were memorial tributes to Larry King ad Alex Trebek, which should been enough. But then the pair, each of whom died in the last year, won Emmys. This was especially ridiculous for Larry King, who hadn’t done a proper interview on TV in a decade. His syndicated shows are infomercials. His win as Best Informative Talk Show Host should have gone to Tamron Hall, whose show is actually ON television, up to date, incredibly well produced.
But Hall lost Best Informative Talk Show to a program again, not even ON television. “Red Table Talk,” hosted by Jada Pinkett Smith, is on Facebook. It’s digital. Nonetheless it had TWO separate nominations in the category as if it were two different shows, and won! Again, Tamron Hall, not to mention the Today Show and GMA3, screwed.
What the heck was “Red Table Talk” doing in the nominations in the first place? NATAS, the TV Academy, doesn’t mix digital soaps with network soaps. So why allow digital programming among network shows? “Red Table Talk” does not have a wide audience no matter how frank and candid Pinkett Smith is about her marriage, sex life, etc. Ridiculous.
Of course, earlier reported is that the Daytime Emmys also made a huge mistake in their In Memoriam section, using the picture of a living actress in place of a dead one. Marguerite Ray, who was on The Young and the Restless years ago, had died. But the Emmys used a photo of Veronica Redd, the actress who replaced her in her role, and is still living, instead. Racist? No. Bone headed? Yes.
All awards shows are down in the ratings. But the Emmys, both prime time and daytime, continue to make a huge mistake. They IGNORE what’s popular. They celebrate marginal, off peak, off TV, way off TV, thinking the people who tune in give a damn. They don’t.
Tamron Hall should have been celebrated for being a pioneering Black woman journalist on a network– and one who survived a purge at NBC in favor of Megyn Kelly only to be vindicated. Instead, the Emmys let her be knocked out by a Hollywood celebrity with a vanity show on the internet.
And they wonder why the ratings are so miserable.
