2021 Primetime Emmy Awards to air September 19 on CBS

Erik Anderson March 2, 2021

CBS and the Television Academy announced Tuesday that the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards will air live on Sunday, September 19 at 5pm PT/8pm ET. The ceremony will air on CBS as well as on demand for the first time on the network’s new streamer Paramount+.

Much remains to be known about the ceremony, potential hosts (although CBS has no shortage of Emmy hosts with their late night lineup) or the Creative Arts Emmy Awards, which last year was a five-night event hosted by Nicole Byer instead of two. Last year, 2020 Primetime Emmy Awards under ABC were the first major awards show to produce under the pandemic and was largely seen as a success, with host Jimmy Kimmel and a sparse number of star presenters inside the Staples Center, and most nominees and winners at home with the now hilarious hazmat suited trophy holder outside of potential nominees’ houses. The Golden Globes, which just aired this last weekend, a full five months after the Emmys, was mostly seen as a failure of style and production.

Recently, the Emmys had decided to combine the Variety Talk and Variety Sketch categories into one but backlash from the late night talk show set made the Television Academy do an about face. This came with the sweeping new set of rules last year that turned the total number of nominees in multiple categories – including acting and the variety – into a sliding scale based on number of submissions. As a result, last year’s Variety Sketch Show had only three nominees.

The Television Academy’s 2021 calendar of key dates and deadlines:

June 1, 2020 – May 31, 2021

Eligibility period for Emmy entries

February 11

Online entry process begins

March 31

Deadline to apply for membership to guarantee voting eligibility for both rounds of the 73rd Emmy competition and for members to secure member entry fee discount. This date also applies to former members. Application must be completed and paid in order to qualify.

April 6

Deadline for current voting members to apply for hyphenate voting status

May 13, 6pm PT

Entry deadline for ALL entries that were originally presented 6:00 PM – 2:00 AM, June 1, 2020 – May 31, 2021 (including hanging episodes); upload deadline for all entry materials

June 17

Nominations-round voting begins

June 28, 10pm PT

Nominations-round voting ends

Tuesday, July 13

Nominations announced

July 27

Deadline for errors and omissions to the nominations

August 13

Final-round videos available for viewing

August 19

Final-round voting begins

August 30, 10pm

Final-round voting ends

September TBD

Creative Arts Emmy Awards and Ball

September 19, 5pm PT

CBS Telecast and Governors Ball

(All dates are subject to change.)

Photo courtesy of The Television Academy and ABC Entertainment

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.