Awards Tracker: The Critics’ Choice and a Year of Controvery

Awards season and the Critics’ Choice are upon us and with them comes controversy.

This post, written by AwardsDaily TV’s Jalal Haddad, appears in its entirely at AwardsDaily TV.

The Fall TV awards season begins tomorrow when the Broadcast Television Journalists Association announce their television nominees for the 7th Annual Critics’ Choice Awards. This week, as frivolous as it feels in our current American political situation, I’ll dissect the current controversies surrounding the BTJA and end the tracker with some of the shows we’ll likely see recognized when nominations are announced.

Critics’ Choice Controversy

The Critics’ Choice Awards are a relatively new awards group, especially on the television side. Recently, the BTJA ran into a major setback that ended with many of the industry’s top television critics resigning from the association including Ken Tucker and two of the nominating committee’s co-chairs, Michael Ausiello and Debra Birnbaum.

The recent departures from the BTJA stem from the decision to partner with Entertainment Weekly not only with the announcement of their nominations but also linking the awards group to various exclusive Critics’ Choice content featured on the magazine’s website. Many respected critics penned a letter condemning this new partnership, ending the letter with their resignation from the group. TVLine’s Michael Ausiello described his frustrations with the changes as “it seems like it’s becoming a marketing event for a single brand, and that’s something I’m just not comfortable with.”

Over the course of two days, 13 critics in total have resigned from the BTJA, accounting for almost 15 percent of the group’s members. Without critics from websites like Indiewire, TVLine, TVGuide, Variety, US Weekly, and Buzzfeed, the association will have a difficult time earning respect as an awards group originally meant to represent the best of the critical industry honoring the best TV has to offer. This is not the first time some of the members have been loudly critical of the organization. Earlier this year the board announced that they would be moving the awards ceremony to December 11th, a choice many of its members criticized a publicity stunt to be the first award of the season that detracted from the films and shows they were trying to celebrate.

It will be interesting to see if the award’s seventh batch of nominees consist of peculiar choices without some of the most respected and recognizable critics in the industry or even worse predominately feature only shows that EW championed.

Head over to AwardsDaily TV for Jalal’s picks on what series are the front runners for Critics’ Choice TV nominations.