The Prime Time Emmy Award nominations were announced on Thursday, and one major show's nomination means big things for how we consume episodic television. Netflix original series, House of Cards was nominated for best drama and people (myself included) are surprised (Jason Bateman is also nominated for Best Actor, Comedy for the now-Netflix produced Arrested Development). Why are we surprised? Because Netflix is not television. It's an online platform that we can watch on our televisions, but it's not a network. At least not the way we're used to.
Netflix started as a mail-subscription service in the US where people would mail away for movies, and when they finished watching them, would mail the discs back. Now, they are a digital service who announced they had purchased the rights to Arrested Development and then announced the production of some all-new series to start with Lillehammer. The success of that show led to shows like Hemlock Grove, Orange is the New Black and House of Cards. But why the fuss around the nomination of Cards? Because this is the first time ever that an episodic show that was not produced specifically for television was nominated for a television award. Because the Prime Time Emmy Awards is for television produced for cable and basic cable. Not necessarily for online produced shows. So, it's like the Academy of Television Arts saying that television doesn't actually have to be aired on television and that a good series can be nominated if it's produced in a similar fashion.
This is giving legitimacy to all those small online productions who couldn't get funding or a meeting with a TV executive and went and did it themselvs. And yes, Netflix is a major corporation, but the precident has been set and who knows where it will take us in the next few years?
It will be interesting to see how Cards fares over many of the other shows nominated, and whether they win or not isn't really the interesting part. It's the nomination.
The Emmys air in September. For a full list of nominees check out their site, and we'll see you at our annual YMC Emmy chat on Twitter!
So, spill it! What do you think about this year's Emmy nominees?
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