Television Academy To Discuss Harvey Weinstein At Thursday Board Meeting, Calls Alleged Behavior “Abhorrent”
EXCLUSIVE: Now that Oscar has kicked him out, is Emmy also about to weigh in on the Harvey Weinstein saga?
A Television Academy spokesman confirms the subject has been a topic of conversation this week at the organization and that they will be addressing it at this week’s upcoming board meeting. “Our view has been this alleged behavior is abhorrent and appalling. We expect this to be discussed at our Board Of Governors meeting this Thursday evening,” said the spokesperson who would not confirm whether or not Weinstein is actually in the TV Academy since their policy is not to give out information on their members.
Considering that Weinstein has been nominated for Emmys a whopping 17 times you can take it to the bank that he is among TV Academy members (full disclosure: so am I and served on the Board as Governor of the writers branch for six years). Weinstein has been a staple at the Emmys with 13 overall nominations for the reality series Project Runway, his most recent coming just last month. He was also nominated three times in Reality categories for his collaboration with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon on their Project Greenlight series beginning with his first nod in 2002. Weinstein also was nominated in the Outstanding Variety Special category in 2013 for 12-12-12: The Concert For Sandy Relief. I recall getting calls at the time from TWC awards consultants vigorously pushing that one for a win in particular with one person (used to working on Oscar campaigns) I remember telling me, “Harvey really wants this one.” It didn’t win, and in fact Weinstein has never been able to cash in on any of his Emmy nominations but television had become a major business for the fallen mogul and his company. He did accept a much coveted Peabody Award for Project Runway, but his name is in the process of being removed from that and all TWC series as Deadline reported earlier this week.
Unlike the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences which held an emergency Board meeting today and voted well in excess of the needed two thirds majority to oust Weinstein from the organization he courted so intensely for years, the Television Academy has many more members with nearly 22,000 eligible to vote from all aspects of the TV industry. The more exclusive AMPAS has only 8427 members but has been growing more rapidly in response to widespread pressure to diversify its membership. Until today only one other member, actor Carmen Caridi in January 2004, was expelled by the Movie Academy and that was for sharing an FYC screener which then ended up being pirated and sold online. As for the TV Academy (at least to my knowledge and others in the organization) no one has been expelled on these kinds of moral grounds (or any other reason) from the group that is best known for handing out Emmys. The TV Academy’s Board and lawyers will no doubt be scouring their bylaws and legal options as the matter gets discussed. As these things go I would imagine that likely to also coming up in that discussion would be TV icon and multiple Emmy winner Bill Cosby as all of this becomes a bit of a slippery slope for these organizations.
RelatedHollywood Celebrates Harvey Weinstein Academy Expulsion With Online Glee
Already in addition to today’s AMPAS action, BAFTA has suspended Weinstein pending a larger hearing and, as Deadline previously exclusively reported, the Producers Guild Board meets on Monday to discuss expelling him from their group that only four years ago gave him the Milestone Award, their highest honor.
As for the Television Academy, as they say in that business stay tuned.
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