With their ratings tumbling year after year, Hollywood award shows were already fighting to keep viewers interested. They debated: Host or no host? Traditional monologue or musical number? Amid the pandemic, with the stakes higher than ever, a new logistical nightmare of a question arose: Postpone or go virtual?

The Emmy Awards chose the latter, and Jimmy Kimmel will host Sunday night’s ceremony from a nearly empty Staples Center. One hopes the people in charge of honoring television would know how to put on an entertaining virtual show, but that’s only half the battle. Producers must also work to preserve the magic of what could become one of the most important nights in the nominees’ careers.

“Why are we doing this? We’re doing it because this has been an extraordinary time that none of us have ever lived through before,” executive producer Ian Stewart said Wednesday at a virtual news conference. “TV broadcast has been our friend right through that whole period. It’s brought us together. … Let’s celebrate the role it’s had in our lives, as well as the people who made it, who are so extraordinarily talented.”

Free of any obligation to physically show up at the Staples Center – aside from the people said to be making “special appearances” – nominees will be spread across the globe, from Los Angeles and New York to Berlin and Tel Aviv. There won’t be a red carpet, though participants might still choose to dress up for the occasion. Stewart has heard murmurs of custom-made pajama sets among those in inconvenient time zones.

Drawing from their experiences with remote production over the past several months, the Emmys team sent camera kits to nominees and the people chosen to represent nominated series. Each kit contains the works: a movie-quality camera, a ring light, a laptop, a stand and all the proper cables. Roughly 130 feeds will make the risky journey from those laptops to the Los Angeles control room to broadcasters and, finally, to our screens.

“What could possibly go wrong? Everything in the chain, 130 times,” Stewart said.

The show won’t resemble its ordinary form, and that’s the point. Producers are embracing the “endearing” quality of filming nominees at home, Stewart continued, adding that they’re forgoing the “sanitized route” of prerecording most of the show. Instead, they’ll broadcast live to the full extent that they can. As executive producer Reginald Hudlin said at the conference, “We’re going to be making up things as we go along.”

Kimmel has expressed in interviews that he is bracing for a “beautiful disaster,” which he has dealt with before; the man did host the Oscars with the best-picture debacle, after all. Nobody knows what to expect from the nominees, though they hope it includes a strong WiFi connection. Many of the actors who play characters in dysfunctional families on television – shout out to “Succession” and “Ozark” fans – will instead be surrounded by their supportive loved ones. Some people will finally be able to bring their dogs to the show.

In a separate phone call with The Washington Post, executive producer Guy Carrington said he hopes these unusual surroundings make viewers feel “slightly more connected.”

“Award ceremonies do have a tendency to feel a little alienating because it’s all these people in one room patting each other on the back,” he said. “In some ways, I hope this breaks that down and feels a little more engaging for the audience. We’re literally going to be in these people’s homes and seeing genuine reactions when they win possibly the biggest award of their career.”

The Emmys follow the MTV Video Music Awards and the BET Awards in going virtual, though many of those shows’ elaborate performances were recorded ahead of time. And unlike this week’s Creative Arts Emmys, which have always been less showy than their prime-time counterpart, the producers of Sunday’s ceremony seem to be approaching it as an opportunity for experimentation. Stewart described this unusual time in history as a “stumbling block or steppingstone, depending on how you use it.”

“Things are going to go wrong. It’s never been done before,” Stewart said. “We’re going to try our best, and the good thing about that is, we’ve got Jimmy Kimmel, who loves live TV and loves chaos on live TV.”

The Emmy Awards airs on ABC at 8 p.m. EDT Sunday.

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