ANOTHER Emmy voting horror story
I've received quite a few emails from industry veterans pooh-poohing the TV academy's claim that participation in voting for Emmy nominations is up this year. Rumors are buzzing through the industry that, in fact, participation is not only down, but down dramatically — as much as 30 to 40 percent, according to a questimate from an exec in charge of overseeing Emmy voting at his network. But ATAS says nay.
However, one more top TV exec says balderdash to that. In an email sent to me on Friday, he recounts the experience of "someone I know very well who I would describe as an invested academy member."
Personally, I can say that I've heard many variations on this same horror story. This is the only one I know that had a happy ending.
"They got that packet in the mail that said voting would be paperless this year so, if they wanted to do paper voting, they had to request it," he says. "Since they wanted to do paperless they just threw out all the paperwork from that packet. (Later) they went on the academy site figuring they'd vote paperless, but after a few attempts at trying to figure out where the online ballot was and not finding it, they called the academy to inquire and learned that in fact voting was not done paperless, only the nominee list was paperless. The actual paper ballot had been included in the original packet that they threw out."
The academy, quite graciously, sent another ballot to this voter.
