Will Randomizing the Alphabet on Ballot Categories Help Prevent Emmy Award Nomination Snubs?

6 May 2016

The Television Academy has opted to make changes to the Emmy ballot this coming Emmy season to help randomize each category in how the alphabetical presentation of names will appear.   The intent of randomizing the alphabetical appearance per category is to prevent snubs due to the lengthy ballot choices.

There were several high-profile omissions last year in the nominations because the actors’  last names appeared lower in the alphabet (examples given were Julianna Margulies for her portrayal of Alica Florick in The Good Wife and Jim Parson for his portrayal of Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory, both who have been previous nominees and are still very popular and consistent in their deliveries.

The ballot last year was presented from A-to-Z alphabetically for all categories, which led some speculation that the length of the ballot impacted the outcome of the nominees.   As the number of contenders each year continue to grow, it only makes the length of the ballot even longer.

First reported in an exclusive with Variety, Bruce Rosenblum, the Television Academy Chairman and CEO gave the following insight into the academy changes being considered to Variety:

“From an alphabetical standpoint, some members when they sign on, they will get A to Z, and some will get Z to A.  That change was made for this year. I’m not sure the programs that had a T, U, V, W  in their first word were disadvantaged from those that had an A, B, C in their first word. Whether or not that’s true is unclear, but it was a concern, and we addressed it.”