The Roku Channel Earns Its First Emmy Nominations For ‘Zoey’s Extraordinary Christmas’ And ‘Immoral Compass’

The Roku Channel got its first three Emmy nominations this morning — two for Zoey’s Extraordinary Christmas and another for Bill Burr’s Immoral Compass.

Zoey’s was commissioned as an original by the streaming outlet last year and streamed during the holiday season, along with past seasons of Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, which was canceled by NBC. The high-spirited musical drama, which features elaborate song-and-dance sequences, was nominated for Outstanding Television Movie and also for choreography by Mandy Moore and Jillian Meyers. (Moore partisans had been disappointed earlier in the day when the star missed out on an acting nom for the final season of This Is Us.) Along with Lionsgate, the nominations cite Universal Music Group, FeigCo and The Tannenbaum Company as stakeholders in the movie.

Like a lot of Roku Originals, Immoral Compass was initially set up as a show for Quibi, Jeffrey Katzenberg’s short-lived short-form startup. Burr wrote, directed, executive produced and starred in the psychological thriller series.

After Quibi fizzled after just a few months during the pandemic turmoil of 2020, almost all of its programming was acquired by Roku, which made the “quick-bite” episodes of six to eight minutes apiece available on the free, ad-supported Roku Channel. Some have found traction and have gained renewals, while Roku has continued to invest in other originals.

The Roku Channel reaches households with about 80 million people in the U.S. Parent company Roku had about 61 million monthly active accounts as of March 31. Launched in 2017, the Roku Channel has become a major strategic focus for the company, becoming one of the top five channel destinations across the entire platform. Through the hub, viewers can access tens of thousands of film and TV titles, hundreds of live, linear channels and a portfolio of subscription services.

The TV Academy recognized many streaming services in the overall nominations. After HBO’s field-leading 140 nominations, Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV+ and HBO Max combined for nearly 280 nods and finished ahead of all broadcast and basic cable networks.