COMPLAINTS CLOUD EMMY PICTURE

As you read this article, the television industry’s Emmy Awards hype machine roars into maximum overdrive.

And as the industry’s Sept. 20 rite of self-congratulations draws closer, some of TV’s leading producers, writers and directors are questioning whether what the public considers the industry’s most prestigious award is worth the gold plate that covers it.

At 5:30 this morning--in time to be broadcast live to the East Coast during the Big Three networks’ morning programs--officials of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences were to release the names of as many as 300 programs and individuals nominated to receive one of more than 70 awards that will be handed out at the 39th annual Emmy Awards ceremonies.

But fewer Hollywood professionals and fans seem to have eagerly awaited this morning’s news.

National ratings for the Emmy broadcasts have been sliding for most of the decade--a decline partially stemmed last year but almost certain to continue even faster when the show switches to the new Fox Broadcasting Co. network this fall.

For the first time in the Emmy Awards’ history, neither ABC, CBS nor NBC will carry the annual autumn ceremonies, nor, according to TV Academy President Richard H. Frank, did they even make what the academy considered a serious effort to acquire the rights to this or the next two years’ shows.

And perhaps most telling about the state of the Emmys, the influential Caucus of Producers, Writers & Directors charges that “the integrity of the academy and its awards is in jeopardy, that the academy has become lazy in its administration and complacent about the image and the prestige of the award.”

The caucus’ complaint is getting attention in Hollywood because its nearly 200 members are the cream of the TV creative community--including names long synonymous with American TV entertainment such as Norman Lear, Lee Rich, Fred Silverman, Aaron Spelling and David Wolper.

The caucus is an independent organization founded more than a decade ago to present a united front for TV’s creative community in, according to its statement of aims and objectives, “assuming a more direct responsibility to the American viewing public in television programming and related fields and to protect our integrity as creative artists.”

Caucus members are responsible, according to some estimates, for more than 90% of commercial television’s prime-time entertainment programs.

The Emmys long have faced criticism--too many categories and shows that run too long. A dispute over administration of the awards was partly to blame for the angry breakup of the Hollywood and New York chapters of the TV academy in 1977.

But, says Emmy-winning producer-director Bob Finkel, who headed a study of the awards for the caucus, the current situation is, by far, the worst ever: “All of the ills became a grave issue this year when the three networks refused to make a deal with the Emmy Awards as a telecast.”

Academy President Frank, who is also president of Walt Disney Studios, dismisses most of the caucus’ complaints. Its members, Frank says, “would like to tell us how to run the Emmy Awards show. . . . I don’t think they have any more say in academy business than anyone else just because they’re a vocal organization that’s gotten together.”

Frank, 44, is finishing the second year of his two-year term heading the 6,000-member academy. He is also running for reelection.

His controversial stand in the negotiations for this year’s broadcast rights was both widely praised and criticized within the industry. Members of the caucus called Frank’s decision to move the show to Fox “courageous,” and he has won high marks from the Hollywood and political communities for an academy-headed, on-air anti-drug and -alcohol abuse campaign throughout the TV production community.

Frank has not, however, won many points with members of the caucus. He has refused to discuss the caucus’ complaints with its members and has insisted that they take their objections to one of the 24 so-called “peer groups” represented on the academy’s committee that runs the Emmys.

“We have writers’, producers’ and directors’ peer groups in the academy,” Frank said, “and we’re more than happy to hear their voice through their peer groups.”

But the caucus says the peer groups--representatives of TV industry specialties--are as much a part of the Emmys’ problems as anything else.

Their complaints are not just the beefs of malcontents, the caucus members say, but reflect serious structural flaws in the Emmys and how they are administered and presented.

However, the caucus members also say that they are barred by the rules of their organization from offering specific recommendations for reforms to the TV academy.

The caucus’ awards-show committee, chaired by Finkel, who has produced 11 Emmy broadcasts, circulated a scathing report about the Emmys among caucus members earlier this summer. Complaints ranged from the overall “dullness” of the annual broadcast to the proliferation of awards categories to internal administrative issues that raise questions about the process for selecting Emmy winners.

The committee’s most damning complaint is that the academy’s principal mechanisms for selecting winners--its so-called “blue-ribbon” awards panels--frequently are composed of members unqualified or underqualified to judge creative work.

“For years the hidden secret of the TV academy has been that the ‘blue-ribbon’ panels were not all that blue,” the committee said in its report. “In recent years the color has faded even more.”

“I think the greatest concern was how the awards are given out,” said producer Jack Haley Jr., a member of the committee. “There’s a terrible problem with the Emmy structure . . . how it’s done by the blue-ribbon committees.”

Academy spokesman Murray Weissman acknowledged that it sometimes cannot fill the various “blue ribbon” judging panels from the ranks of active academy members, but said that the academy then turns to members of the various professional entertainment-industry guilds “to get qualified people to flesh out the blue-ribbon panels.”

In contrast to the Oscar voting procedures of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the TV academy’s process for nomination and selection of winners, says the caucus, turns the Emmys into a vast popularity contest that too often equates artistic accomplishment with ratings success. The caucus members say the process also encourages the proliferation of awards and, in some cases, results in shows being grouped in categories that defy logic.

Shows may wind up in the running for awards categories that appear to mix apples and oranges and apricots. Last year, for example, the category for best variety, music or comedy program pitted “The American Film Institute Salute to Billy Wilder,” “The Kennedy Center Honors: A Celebration of the Performing Arts,” “Late Night With David Letterman,” “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” and “The 1986 Tony Awards.”

“How can those kinds of disparate shows compete with one another?” asked caucus committee chairman Finkel. “And how can people sit in a room and make an intelligent assessment?”

Under its current procedures, the TV academy nominates best-program finalists by ballots sent to all active academy members, and individuals by ballots sent to all members of a particular discipline’s peer group. Blue-ribbon panels of peer-group specialists then select the winners. Oscars, in contrast, are nominated by specialists and then voted on by the full membership of the movie academy.

The Emmys’ blue-ribbon panels are formed from what Weissman said are about 1,000 academy members who show up for a weekend to view and select winners from among the nominated shows, performers and craftspeople. In theory, actors vote on actors, directors for directors and so on.

This year’s panels are scheduled to meet Aug. 22-23.

Members of each panel, which can vary in size from a few to more than 15, review tapes of the nominees in a specific category and then vote for the Emmy winner. Panel members do not know the count of the general membership votes, said the academy’s Frank, but an independent audit showed that the panels tend to select the winner from among the first or second highest vote-getter nominated in each category.

The caucus claims that the system of blue-ribbon panels is abused and may result in a commercial director sitting on the panel judging directors of miniseries, or documentary writers judging comedy writing.

“Keep in mind--those judging the directing may not necessarily be directors,” said caucus committee member Hugh Benson. “They can be secretaries, and have been.”

That, said the academy’s Weissman, is not possible under current procedures. Panelists are required to properly register and present validation of their qualifications to judge the nominees.

More to the heart of the general criticism that the Emmys have too many categories is the TV academy’s practice of establishing separate awards for separate types of programs. In addition to the best comedy series, dramatic series or miniseries, the academy’s nomination process also includes separate awards for actors, supporting actors, directors and writers for each of those categories.

Last year, for example, there were 17 different Emmys for TV performers. The Oscars have four. There were six TV directing categories and five for costumes--versus one each in the Oscars.

“There should be one director award,” said caucus committee chairman Finkel. “Five minutes after the Emmys, you don’t know who won what.”

Academy President Frank tacitly acknowledges the proliferation of categories by pointing out his view of just how the system works. The academy, in his view, has managed to hold the number of categories down rather than encourage their growth.

“What tends to happen,” Frank said, “is, if there’s a recommendation to add a writing category, say, when (the proposal) gets to the (academy’s) board of governors, the arguments generally go, ‘If we give one for writers, then we’ll have to give one for directors. Then we’ll have to give one for stars.’ So one award may trigger 10 awards.”

At that rate, it didn’t take long for the number of Emmy Awards to grow. The count went from one network Emmy Award presented in 1949 to five the next year and six the next; it quickly reached 14 awards in 1953. Then, as if consummating the nation’s new love affair with the TV set, Emmys multiplied faster than the postwar Baby Boomers.

The first network Emmy was awarded for the best film made for television--the telecast of “The Necklace” on NBC’s short-lived “Your Show Time” dramatic anthology series. By 1953, Emmy Awards were handed out for program achievement (best dramatic program, situation comedy, public affairs, etc., and for on-air performances such as best male star of a regular series). Edward R. Murrow took the award that year for “most outstanding personality.”

By 1970, acting awards had been broken down by program genre--outstanding continued performance by an actress in a leading role in a dramatic series, for example--and more directors, writers and other behind-the-camera professionals were winning recognition.

There were 26 Emmy categories by 1968, 38 in 1971 and 72 last year--even as separate Emmy Awards ceremonies have been created for daytime TV, sports and news and public affairs programs.

The number of Oscar categories has grown to 23 this year from 12 in 1928. The number of the recording industry’s Grammys has grown to 68 at this year’s program from 28 in 1958--when the awards were first handed out.

As the number of Emmys handed out has increased, the categories have grown narrower and narrower, leading some critics to claim that an overriding concern of the TV academy is to boost fragile show-business egos by seeing that as many people as possible have Emmys on their mantles.

That, say the producers, is because among the thousands of people in the TV business, an Emmy can mean the difference between working or not working for, say, an actor, a director or a makeup artist.

“In many ways an Emmy Award has infinitely more impact on somebody’s career than an Oscar,” said caucus committee member Haley.

But, the committee members also say, the Emmy inflation has denigrated the importance and overall prestige of the award, the “integrity,” as the group called it in their report.

As currently administered, the Emmy “doesn’t do justice to the medium that we’re in,” said committee member Irv Wilson. “It trivializes it.”