Primetime Emmy Award

The Primetime Emmy Awards, or Primetime Emmys, are part of the extensive range of Emmy Awards for artistic and technical merit for the American television industry. Presented by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), the Primetime Emmys are awarded in recognition of excellence in American primetime television programming. They are divided into three classes: the regular Primetime Emmy Awards, the Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards to honor technical and other similar behind-the-scenes achievements, and the Primetime Engineering Emmy Awards for recognizing significant contributions to the engineering and technological aspects of television. First presented in 1949, the award was originally referred to as simply the "Emmy Award" until the International Emmy Award and the Daytime Emmy Award were created in the early 1970s to expand the Emmy to other sectors of the television industry.

The Primetime Emmy Awards generally air in September, on the Sunday before the official start of the fall television season. Since 1995, the Emmys have been broadcast in rotation among the four major networks (ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC), with each network taking turns to air the ceremony every four years. If NBC broadcasts it, the ceremony is moved to Monday night (in 2006, 2010, and 2014, NBC aired in the last Sunday in August), to avoid conflicts with NBC's commitment to broadcasting Sunday-night NFL games (due to another conflict, this time with the MTV Video Music Awards being presented on a Sunday, the 2014 ceremony was moved to a Monday). The 2018 ceremony and 2022 ceremony, both broadcast by NBC, were moved back to September and aired on a Monday.