By BILL HARRIS

Special to The Lede

If an EMMY Award® is ever given out for reinventing the awards-show genre, this year’s edition might snare the hardware.

Airing live on CTV, Sunday at 8 p.m. ET, the 72nd ANNUAL PRIMETIME EMMY AWARDS will obviously be very different, out of necessity due to the pandemic. With Jimmy Kimmel hosting, the nominees will be hooked up virtually.

In a video featurette that was shown to TV reporters this week, prior to a panel interview with executive producers Reginald Hudlin and Ian Stewart, Kimmel was at his playful, tongue-in-cheek best in describing what this year’s EMMYS are going to be like:

• “I mean, just think about having a Zoom with your family, and how complicated that is, even just getting Grandma to look at the camera, or get her whole face on camera. Multiply that by like a million, and that's what we're dealing with here.”
• “They asked me to host the EMMYS well before the pandemic occurred, and it seemed like it would be fun at the time. And now it seems like it's going to be less fun.”
• “The show this year will be a mix of celebrities and people to whom we want to pay tribute for their work during this pandemic. Then we'll also have select celebrities on hand to infect me.”
• “It'll be the same number of categories, we're still giving out the same number of EMMYS. One thing there will be less of? There will be less enthusiasm. There will be no fake laughs after my monologue jokes.”
• “But hopefully it will be entertaining for people at home, and let's face it - you have nothing to do.”
• “The virtual EMMYS: Who are you NOT wearing?"

Kidding aside, Hudlin and Stewart are seeing this year’s EMMYS as a unique opportunity.

“As producers, we have tried to look at every item and say, ‘Well, this is a new start in a way - it doesn't have to be like that,’ ” Stewart said. “We've done these before, a lot of them, and it gets into a rhythm and a pattern that we all know, and I call it ‘award fatigue.’ Why don't we break all of that up? Award shows have sort of stayed the same. Someone walks out with a mic, a nomination, bang, a winner, et cetera. So although we are not going to, in any way, denigrate the fact that you are winning the world's most prestigious TV award, which is really important, we think there's a lot of fun to be had around it.”

It’s supposed to be a three-hour broadcast. If anyone’s acceptance speech is running long, the producers have the power to cut them off with the touch of a computer key, and they can blame technical difficulties!

“You’ve been in our meetings, haven’t you?” Stewart said with a laugh.

So here’s the big question: Balancing that power with the actual potential technical traps, is this year’s show more likely to be on time than the average EMMYS, or less likely?

“Look, if you won an award and you've got to hug your spouse and your kids and your mom and the dog and the cat and the parakeet, is that longer than it takes to get up from your chair and walk to the podium? We don't know,” Hudlin admitted. “We'll find out.”

Stewart added, “One of the execs said, ‘I don't care what you do, just for goodness' sake, make it entertaining.’ So if it's entertaining, then I think we'll all stay. That's always the touchstone for all of us. Would I watch this? So who knows? It might be way under. It might be way over. It might be on time. I think that's unlikely.”

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@billharris_tv