For the last quarter of a century, MTV has aired its own movie awards show each year. The MTV Movie Awards give viewers the chance to weigh in and vote for what they deem the best of the best every year in all things movies. Unfortunately for TV fans, the awards have overlooked what the small screen has to offer...until now. MTV has announced that the next presentation of the MTV Movie Awards will also honor TV. The new ceremony will be called the MTV Movie & TV Awards.
MTV has not yet announced what kind of categories will be available for TV. In years past, the Movie Awards honored traditional categories like Movie of the Year and Best Performance as well as more unique categories like Best Kiss, Best Fight, and Best Villain. We can bet that TV will probably get its own version of a lot of the Movies categories, but there may need to be some key differences. After all, the sheer volume of TV is far more significant than however many movies are released in a given year.
Of course, given that this ceremony will be put on by MTV, we can probably count on older-skewing shows like NCIS and Criminal Minds not scoring nominations for any major awards. If the TV nominations are similar to the Movie nominations, I'd put my money on shows like The Walking Dead, The Big Bang Theory, Game of Thrones, and anything superhero getting acknowledgment. At the very least, there would probably be plenty of contenders for Best TV Fight on the airwaves nowadays, and I'm guessing the race for Best TV Kiss could get pretty heated.
There has been no announcement just yet of who will host the first annual MTV Movie & TV Awards. Conan O'Brien was master of ceremonies in 2014, and he was followed by Amy Schumer in 2015. Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart shared hosting duties in 2016. Unlike many other awards shows, the MTV Movie Awards tend not to repeat hosts, so I'm guessing we'll get somebody brand new for 2017. Whoever lands the top job may have a lot more to do than his or her predecessors now that television is being honored in addition to movies.
The announcement that the Movie Awards will also include TV comes after reports that MTV is looking to change things up with its programming moving forward. The network faced falling ad revenue for years, and it has been working to bring back viewers in its target demographic. Recent changes have involved bringing back more of the music and reality TV shows. The addition of TV to the Movie Awards may be one more way that MTV is trying to mix things up and draw a bigger audience. We'll have to wait and see if the numbers are higher for a mixed awards show than the average ratings for just Movies.
The first annual MTV Movie & TV Awards will air on Sunday, May 7 at 8 p.m. ET. Check out our midseason TV premiere schedule to see all your small screen viewing options.
