On September 17 local time, the 70th American "Golden Time Emmy Awards" was held in Los Angeles. The Emmy Award's "Old Face" and "Game of Power" staged "Return of the King", and won the Best Drama Award for the third time in four years. Amazon's new play "The Great Mrs. Mather" won the best comedy drama award. Behind the competition between the old and new works, the new situation of the TV drama market caused by the rise of streaming media such as Netflix is particularly attractive.
The Emmy Award is the highest award in the American television industry. It is divided into three categories, namely, the domestic prime time award, the domestic daytime program award and the international Emmy Award abroad. Usually, the so-called Emmy Awards are the prime time Emmy Awards, and the prime time refers to the period from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. every day.
As a legendary drama series launched by HBO, Game of Thrones won the best drama award in 2015 and 2016, and was absent in 2017 due to irregular broadcasting time. In this Emmy Award selection, Game of Thrones won 22 nominations, leading all the dramas participating in the evaluation. In the end, the play won 6 awards, among which Peter Dinraki, the actor of "Little Devil", won the best supporting actor award in the drama category for the third time.
The strength of the old drama is still there, and the new drama is also emerging. The new play "The Great Mrs. Mather" launched by Amazon won five awards, including the best comedy drama award, the best actress award and the best supporting actress award.
However, compared with winning awards for popular American dramas, the competition between drama producers seems to attract more attention from the outside world. At the nomination stage, Netflix, which launched such dramas as Crown and Strange Tales, received 112 nominations, more than 108 from HBO, breaking HBO's dominance of Emmy nomination for 17 years. The two have received more nominations than the next five TV stations combined. After the awards were announced, Netflix and HBO won 23 awards respectively, also becoming the biggest winners. Netflix and HBO are neck and neck, which means that streaming media and traditional media have formed a trend of keeping abreast to some extent.
The so-called streaming media refers to the media format played on the Internet by streaming transmission. Streaming means that users can watch the video while the merchant transmits it, instead of downloading it first. Netflix in the United States was originally a DVD rental service provider. In 2011, it split its business and specialized in streaming media. In 2013, Netflix launched 13 episodes of its own play House of Cards at one time, which set a record audience rating and won two Emmy Awards that year.
After the success of Netflix, traditional American TV stations have launched their own online services to win audiences, and many new streaming media companies have grown. After Amazon, an e-commerce company, entered the field of streaming media, its "The Great Mrs. Mather" became the first streaming media series to win the award of best comedy series. In addition, Hulu, a leading media company, launched The Story of the Handmaid, which won the Emmy Award for Best Drama last year, and was the first streaming media drama to win the award. However, Netflix still dominates the streaming media market in the United States, accounting for about two-thirds of the market share. In May this year, Netflix also signed an agreement with former US President Barack Obama and his wife to hire Obama to produce content for the company.
The reason why streaming media companies can quickly catch up with traditional TV stations is that they have invested heavily in content. In 2017, Netflix spent US $8.7 billion on content, which may reach US $12 billion this year, while HBO and other traditional TV stations invested up to US $34 billion on content. However, streaming media, which makes a living by burning money, also faces problems such as user growth, whether it can launch high-quality content and profit model. Although the streaming media of the Emmy Awards has been in the limelight this time, it is hard to say whether streaming media will dominate the TV industry in the future when traditional media are seeking innovation and change.
