A Big Morning for Television
On July 8, the Television Academy announced nominations for the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards from the Wolf Theatre in North Hollywood, and the morning belonged to “The Pitt.” HBO Max’s medical drama pulled in 25 nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series and a Lead Actor nod for Noah Wyle, putting it at the top of the leaderboard ahead of a competitive field that includes “The Diplomat,” “The Gilded Age,” “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” “Paradise,” “Pluribus,” “Slow Horses” and “Your Friends & Neighbors.” On the comedy side, “Hacks” set a new record for the category with 24 nominations. The ceremony airs September 14 on NBC and Peacock, hosted by Mariska Hargitay.
For anyone watching the business side of Hollywood rather than just the red carpet, the nomination list is also a snapshot of where production money is actually going.
Prestige TV Keeps Betting on Scale
What ties a lot of this year’s top nominees together is scale. “The Gilded Age” is a period piece built around sprawling exteriors and location work. “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” carries the production DNA of the “Game of Thrones” universe, which has never been shy about aerial establishing shots. “The Pitt,” despite being largely contained to a hospital set, still leans on a production level — multi-camera, long-take, high-stakes — that reflects a broader appetite among streamers for shows built to look and feel expensive. Even in a year where budgets across the industry have tightened, the shows getting nominated are, disproportionately, the ones that spent like it mattered.
Where Aerial Work Fits Into the Picture
That scale shows up in ways audiences don’t always clock consciously. A cold open that establishes a city skyline before cutting to a courtroom. A transitional shot that carries a season timeskip. A season finale that needs one shot big enough to justify the finale. Aerial cinematography has become a normal part of the toolkit showrunners reach for when a scene needs to feel bigger than a soundstage — not as a gimmick, but as connective tissue between locations, especially for productions shooting across Los Angeles, Las Vegas and beyond that need coverage a crane or a helicopter can’t deliver on a TV schedule or a TV budget.
The View From the Ground
CineDrones has been on set for exactly this kind of work — production teams that need an aerial unit that understands set etiquette, can turn around footage on a broadcast timeline, and can move between a studio backlot in Los Angeles and a Strip-adjacent location in Las Vegas without missing a call time. Awards mornings like this one are a reminder that the demand for that kind of coverage tracks pretty closely with the health of scripted television itself — and this year, despite plenty of industry hand-wringing, the nominees suggest big, ambitious production is still very much what wins.
What to Watch Next
The next marker will be September 14, when Emmy voters decide whether nomination leaders like “The Pitt” convert their morning into wins. But for production crews, the more immediate signal is simpler: shows this size don’t get made without location units, aerial coverage and crews who can deliver on tight, demanding schedules — and that pipeline of work isn’t slowing down.
Book the Coverage
If your production is planning location work in Los Angeles or Las Vegas this season, CineDrones handles the aerial unit end to end — FAA-cleared pilots, broadcast-ready turnaround, and crews who know how to move fast on a call sheet. Get in touch with CineDrones to lock in dates.
