Must the Show Go On?
By: Bryce Zabel
Tags: Hollywood, Awards, Television, Emmys, Culture

The Emmys faced another existential threat when 9/11 occurred five days before a scheduled telecast. What follows are the lessons we learned during the two months that followed.

Graphic by Lynda Karr

I was elected Chairman/CEO of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in August 2001, naively thinking that being the first writer since Rod Serling to hold that post might be what distinguished my term in office. Then, just a month later, 9/11 hit. The Emmy® broadcast was scheduled for September 16th of that year.

A powerfully important decision had to be made immediately by the Television Academy. Was it possible — five days after the worst act of terrorism in history — to imagine a walk down the red carpet with Hollywood celebs? We had to get it right and we had to do so under the pressure of tragic breaking news.

What Do You Think?

Even as my family gathered around the TV to watch those horrific images, Academy leaders were on the phone with our members and in consultation with our network sponsors at CBS. During the phone tag interaction, it was clear that this event had to impact the Emmys® strongly. Even the idea that they might not happen at all was on the table immediately. I asked if there had ever been a year when they had not taken place. The answer was no. Even so, that Tuesday afternoon, after more phone calls and meetings, there was unanimous support to cancel the upcoming show on Sunday.

This would have an incredible financial impact on both CBS and the Academy, but no one at this point even cared. We confirmed that decision to the media with the caveat that there was yet no clarity as to when the ceremony would be re-scheduled. After all, the death toll was mounting in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Nothing seemed to matter but that. Certainly not a TV show where celebrities dressed up and gave each other awards.

Two dates were on the table for a re-scheduled ceremony — the only times that the Shrine Auditorium could be rented again — September 24 and October 7. The network side tended to favor September 24 because the Emmys® have always been like a starting gun for the fall season. The Academy side tended to favor October 7 because the passions of the moment made it seem inconceivable that anyone would be ready for a red carpet in less than two weeks.

In the end, after both sides canvassed the likely attendees, we realized that September 24 would have too many no-shows. October 7 became the date by default. There had also been debate about giving up and not doing them at all. While we all felt that would have been an easy decision, we came to believe that waiting almost a month after the attacks would work.

Fate had other ideas.

Don’t Let the Terrorists Win

In the weeks to come, as the nation struggled to find its footing, we were urged as a people to get back to whatever it was we did before 9/11 because, if we didn’t, then “the terrorists win.” I remember an editorial cartoon of Osama bin Laden in his cave cursing the fact that we re-scheduled the Emmys® and explaining to an underling that this was a defeat for terrorism. If only it were that simple.

The media immediately latched onto the Emmy situation as a barometer of the impact of 9/11 on Hollywood and also as a yardstick to measure whether Hollywood truly understood the nation’s pain. As the Television Academy’s primary spokesman, it became my job to fully understand every facet of what was going on and to brief reporters who were scrambling to cover this breaking sidebar to a monumental story.

Honestly, that time period still seems like a dream. The Los Angeles Times called me “the Ari Fleischer of the entertainment industry,” a comparison to Bush’s press secretary that felt like more of a compliment at the time than it would later seem. All I know is that during those nearly 60 days, I woke up every morning and put on a suit and tie and drove into town to face whatever challenge was coming up. I’d been a CNN correspondent and a local TV news reporter before I became a Hollywood writer/producer, but in those news incarnations I was always the one asking the questions. This time I was answering them as best I could.

My wife Jackie was my constant companion during this period — we’d met back when we were both TV reporters — and she drove me everywhere so I could work the phone, test out talking points with her, and stay on top of events that seemed to break hourly. Being from the media ourselves made it so much easier to understand what they needed and to be responsive.

Even so, there was no real way to prepare for this. Very early in the crisis, it seemed clear that the only way to deal with the media was to be fully transparent and allow them to see and be a part of experiencing the thoughts that were going into the decisions we were making. This had the added benefit that whenever someone asked me a question I didn’t have to rack my brain for the “right” answer. The right answer was always the real answer. Sometimes it was “I don’t know” or “I’ll get back to you.”

The White House Did Not Clear the War with Us

On October 7th, the Sunday morning when the 53rd Emmy® Awards had been re-scheduled to air, I was lacing up my shoes for another run to shake off the nerves that come with knowing you will be speaking before 6,000 people in an audience and 90 million others on their TV sets. But my phone rang and a friend said, “Turn on your TV.”