Parker and Stone decided to submit "Margaritaville" for an Emmy Award because they had received a large amount of positive feedback about the episode from adults and older viewers. Since most Emmy voters are older, they decided "Margaritaville" stood the best chance of winning. Stone joked, "If an Emmy voter were to watch this, they might think the show was smarter than it was, so they might be fooled into voting for us." "Margaritaville" ultimately won the 2009 Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program for Programming Less Than One Hour. It competed against "Robot Chicken", "The Simpsons" and "American Dad!" at the 61st Primetime Emmy Awards, which was held September 12, 2009.