People’s Choice Awards move to E!; what’s the impact on Outlander, Supernatural, others?

For everyone who follows the People’s Choice Awards closely (and we know that there are some out there), one thing has remained fairly stable — the fact that the show airs on CBS.

Moving into next year, however, that is going to be changing. E! has confirmed that started in 2018, they will be the new home for the awards show after countless years over on The Eye network. What does this mean? It may be a little hard to put it precisely into words just yet, but there are a few things that we know we’d love to see as a result of the move.

More time to honor shows – Given that E! is a cable network, for example, maybe they’ll be more keen to honor a wide array of different shows and then ACTUALLY SHOW THEM ON THE SHOW. We went into detail last year regarding the way that they handled multiple wins for Outlander, including them not even allowing them a taped video message from overseas when they won the top TV prize. We anticipate a further willingness being there, though it may be too early to know for sure. Some other shows that could benefit are ones like Supernatural or Westworld, ones that have smaller overall audiences but devoted fans who will be ready to vote early and often.

Different categories – We can easily imagine some shakeups happening across the board there. We’d personally like to see things condensed slightly, given that the People’s Choice Awards are almost now the Teen Choice Awards in terms of having a zillion or so things that people can vote on.

Different presenters / hosts – Understandably, CBS in the past has chosen to sprinkle in many stars from their own shows into the lineup. Not only that, but the host for the occasion tends to frequently be someone with a network tie like Joel McHale this year or Jane Lynch / Kaley Cuoco in the past. Given that E! is a part of a larger organization in NBCUniversal, it wouldn’t surprise us now if many of the hosts / presenters are in that family.

Ultimately, the move is probably going to result in lower ratings for the PCAs since you are moving from broadcast to cable. That’s just the natural order of things. Maybe it results in a better show as a whole, but that is just us being optimistic. This is one of those things where you have to take a wait-and-see approach because there are so many different things that can change as a result of a network swap.

For now, let’s pose the question to you — what do you hope to see on the People’s Choice Awards moving forward, and do you think that a network change could do anything? Share some of your thoughts with a comment below! (Photo: People’s Choice Awards.)