The Emmy Awards will move to Amazon Prime Video in 2027 under a six-year deal, ending decades on broadcast TV after viewership collapsed to roughly 7 million.
Amazon and the Television Academy struck the agreement announced Tuesday, shifting the ceremony off the old network rotation that had carried it since the 1950s. The 79th Primetime Emmy Awards will air next September on Prime Video, and no subscription will be required to watch.
Breitbart reported the deal ends a seven-decade run in which the show appeared on broadcast networks every year since 1955. For the past three decades, ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC took turns under the so-called Wheel Deal. NBC hosted last month. Now that cycle is finished.
Peak Emmy audiences once topped 20 million viewers. Recent telecasts have hovered around 7 million. This year’s ceremony was trounced by the season’s first Monday Night Football game, Kansas City Chiefs versus Denver Broncos, on ESPN. The numbers tell a plain story: fewer people are tuning in.
Television Academy chairman Cris Abrego framed the move as a bid for stability and reach. Rotating networks, he said, forced constant resets.
Abrego told the Associated Press:
"Continuity is a big part of what we’re looking for because the rotating part of it basically meant in many ways that we were starting over every year,"
He added that a single six-year partner lets both sides “learn together and build from year to year together.” Abrego also said the Academy wanted reach and access and judged Amazon aligned with that goal. “They really support all television,” he said.
The Academy demanded the show remain free. Amazon agreed. Viewers will not need a Prime Video subscription when the ceremony lands on the platform.
Mike Hopkins, head of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, treated the timeline as urgent. The deal takes effect for the 2027 show rather than years later, unlike the Oscars arrangement announced in December that sends that ceremony to YouTube starting in 2029.
Hopkins said:
"We’re on the clock, we gotta get rolling,"
He argued the streamer can grow the audience and lower its age profile. Year-round promotion of nominees inside Amazon’s service, he said, can drive both series viewing and the awards telecast itself.
Hopkins put it this way:
"I think we’re going to be able to increase the viewership over time on this show, age it down, actually bring in a younger audience, which I think is a catalyst to growing,"
He described Prime Video as a hybrid of live and on-demand programming and said the company has made live events a real priority. Amazon first carried an NFL game nearly a decade ago; the Emmys now join that live push.
Abrego rejected the idea that delivery method defines television. The Academy’s standard, he said, is excellence wherever it appears.
He told reporters:
"The Academy has never defined television by how it reaches your screen or even which screen it reaches,"
And: “The goal is to consistently want to recognize excellence wherever it comes from.” The ceremony stays in September for 2027. Abrego said the Academy has talked with Amazon about possible future date changes and remains open to exploring them.
The package also noted an existing Prime Video partnership angle with Apple TV titles such as “Widow’s Bay” and “The Studio,” underscoring how streaming catalogs already mix across platforms even as the awards show itself jumps ship from broadcast.
From NBC’s first national telecast in 1955 through the Wheel Deal decades, the Emmys lived on free over-the-air networks. That era is closing because the audience shrank. A show that once cleared 20 million now scrapes by near 7 million and loses head-to-head with a single NFL opener. Hollywood’s awards calendar is following the viewers, and the money, onto streaming shelves.
Amazon gets a flagship live event and a year-round marketing hook. The Television Academy gets a multi-year partner and a promise of wider promotional reach. Broadcast networks lose another tentpole that no longer delivers mass audiences the way it once did.
When viewers stop showing up, institutions eventually move. The Emmys just did.
