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If it feels like the entire list of 2026 Emmy nominees has descended upon Los Angeles this week, it is because the Television Academy is getting ready to put up its second annual Televerse festival, complete with panels for the majority of shows nominated for a major category that will air during the Primetime Emmys telecast on September 14.
Last year, I got into the pros and cons of the inaugural event which sought to be a nexus point for the second phase of Emmy campaigning, which has been more decentralized in the past. I overall don’t hate the idea of offering one place where Emmy voters can go and give proper consideration for every nominee in the Comedy, Drama, and Limited Series categories, among others. It also gives TV Academy members a taste of some of the panels and programming that the organization does year-round. The issues are more so with execution, which I will circle back to later.
But the element of Televerse last year that most impressed me, and what I eventually rang up TV Academy President and CEO Maury McIntyre again about, was the return of the TV Academy Hall of Fame.
Last year, luminaries like Conan O’Brien, Ryan Murphy, and Viola Davis were all honored at the event, which closed out the festival on a high note. But while those names are on the more ubiquitous side, where it is more like they were not not campaigning for Emmys, the big difference with this year’s class of TV Academy Hall of Fame honorees is how it includes several names that are more explicitly current Emmy frontrunners, like “Hacks” star Jean Smart and “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
McIntyre shared that the reason why the Hall of Fame selection committee was established is actually, in part, to have a group with some independence from the overall TV Academy. “We didn’t want them necessarily thinking about, ‘Oh, well, Jean’s going to win the Emmy this year,’ or, ‘The ‘South Park’ guys had a great year.’ I’m sure the committee may think some of those things, and we certainly make them aware of as much history as we can. They know how many nominations somebody has had,” he said over the phone. “But part of the aspect of this committee is to make sure that they aren’t being swayed necessarily by what’s going on in any given year around the Emmys.”
While similar awards like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ honorary Oscars have shown interest in trying to recognize film industry titans that have yet to win a statuette, induction into the TV Academy Hall of Fame is “not necessarily about how many Emmys you may or may not have won, or let’s rectify a situation where we thought maybe we owed you something,” said McIntyre.
Instead, “we’re really looking for somebody who has made an indelible mark on television, who through a course of their career has really just established a way of doing things or transformed the way others do things, or had performances that just ran the gamut that really sets the standard for what you look for in an icon of television, said the TV Academy executive. “We also do look at someone who has made just one tremendous effort that has changed the way we look at things.”
McIntyre notes that the Hall of Fame committee itself, which includes people like chair Rick Rosen, WME co-founder and head of television, or member Pearlena Igbokwe, chairwoman of Universal Studio Group, is comprised of high profile members of the TV industry that could plausibly be inducted into the Hall of Fame themselves one day. “It’s really helpful to have that caliber of person finding the person who should be in the Hall of Fame,” he said.
Another fascinating part of the induction process is the rules around posthumous eligibility. For example, 2026 Hall of Fame inductee Ed Bradley, an icon of CBS news magazine “60 Minutes,” died in 2006. “The committee actually has a very specific charter in terms of what they can look at in terms of the number of inductees they can have,” said McIntyre. “And included in that is a number that they can only actually award one posthumous award, which, again, with the history of television, that’s really hard because there are plenty of people who haven’t been inducted.”
For example, the TV Academy Hall of Fame, which was established in 1984, has gone as far back as inducting Philo T. Farnsworth, the man who was granted the first patent for the television by the United States government nearly a century ago. So there is still much ground for the committee to cover as far as the history of TV goes. “That is a very, very hard decision every year because, again, there can only be one posthumous [inductee], because we are hoping to get in as many people who can come in and actually accept the award for themselves,’ said McIntyre.
This year, the TV Academy Hall of Fame is going to open Televerse as a standalone event on Thursday, August 13, as opposed to closing the festival like it did last year. “We thought [the event] was a great capstone through the weekend, but it was pretty hard on staff,” said McIntyre, explaining the reason for the move. “It was pretty hard from a production perspective to go from that three-day festival into a major award ceremony. So we thought this year, ‘Hey, why don’t we kick it off that way?’ That way we’re fresh going into it. We don’t have to worry about the fact that there were panels all day, etc.”
In terms of changes to the overall festival, there will be less of a focus on individual tickets to events, in favor of passholders who will now have more ability to sample more of what the festival has to offer. “Now it’s much more about, ‘Come on down! Yeah, you can sign up for things in advance, but hey, just walk the day, and as you see things that look interesting, pop in and see how it goes,’” said McIntyre.
There are also still ongoing conversations about whether or not August is the right time for Televerse. “From our perspective, it’s a little close to the Emmys, so it feels like this time is really, really busy at this point,” he said. There has been positive and negative feedback around the timing of the event being the weekend before final Emmys voting opens.
Finally, I could not let McIntyre go without asking for some sort of update on the Television Academy’s new Legacy Award. He joked that upon the announcement of the honor given to a past TV series that has sustained relevance and influence among genre, audiences, and culture, “It was like, ‘Did y’all do this for “The Wire”?’ And the answer is no, but I mean, it’s a perfect example of an award that could go to something like ‘The Wire.’”
The idea for the award actually came from Hall of Fame committee member Igbokwe, who basically said “We have a Hall of Fame for performers, why don’t we have a Hall of Fame for shows?” He said, “whether they were on the air in 2000 or they were on the air in 1950,” the series they considered awarding are ones “that actually still mean something to audiences and help shape a little bit how we do television today.”
McIntyre did share that the organization has chosen its inaugural winner, but did not reveal when and how the news will be announced. The only tease is that the Legacy Award recipient is “going to be a bit of a no-brainer.”
See IndieWire’s full list of 2026 Emmy predictions, complete with frontrunners, contenders, and long shots on our website. As a reminder, my email is majones@indiewire.com if you’d like to share any feedback.