TCA Summer 2020 Canceled

After a productive winter press tour for the Television Critics Association (TCA), that saw the roll-out of HBO Max, Apple TV+ and a “Halo” series for Showtime, it was assumed summer would reveal more surprises. Unfortunately, the TCA announced Friday May 1 they are cancelling their summer tour in response to the on-going public health crisis and prohibition of large gatherings.

Not much was known about what the TCA summer event series would look like though it was scheduled to run from July 27 through August 11. All the major television networks, as well as stream giants Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and YouTube were scheduled to have days devoted to their lineup.

No doubt Peacock and HBO Max would have seen big pushes. With the TCA summer schedule so uncertain HBO Max has already announced it will debut on May 27th, while Peacock moved up their release for select customers to April 15th and dropped trailers for several of their original series.

Nearly every major media event planned for this year has been cancelled or postponed. From a television standpoint, network upfronts are being conducted virtually this year with nearly every studio shutting down production on their shows. The Emmy calendar for this year has already been reconfigured to allow networks to figure out which shows to release and when voting will be conducted with smaller content.

It’s possible the TCAs could do virtual presentations or consider doing something towards the end of the year to coincide with the later voting schedule. This would allow them to focus solely on Emmy nominees as opposed to the wider television playing field.

FX’s big Emmy contender, “Fargo” has postponed their premiere indefinitely as well as National Geographic’s new season of “Genius” focused on Aretha Franklin. It might just make sense for them to wait till winter of 2021 to give studios a chance to recoup any time or money with delayed product.

The arrival of several of the new streaming services gives us glimmers of future Emmy contenders and will hopefully help fill in any gaps once production starts back up again.

The TCA itself is comprised of over 200 professional journalists across the United States and Canada.

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