When the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences presents the 59th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 16, the man at the helm of the Fox broadcast will be Ken Ehrlich, back for his fourth turn as executive producer. But that wasn't exactly how it was originally planned.

Back in February, Fox Entertainment President Peter Liguori announced that Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick, the producers behind the ratings-rich "American Idol," would take on the Emmys broadcast. In May, the "American Idol" duo withdrew from the project, saying, "After we wrapped the enormous effort of 'Idol Gives Back,' we looked at our upcoming slate of projects ... and realized that we could not devote the creative energy and time necessary to make the Emmys outstanding for the Television Academy and Fox."

Ken Ehrlich Productions stepped in and is now overseeing preparations for the broadcast.

"I'm really pleased that the academy called us when the other guys bowed out," Mr. Ehrlich said. "They told us they really liked what we did with the last two Emmy shows, but

the network, Fox, had chosen those other guys. But we're big boys, so we understood that was what it was. All this really did was put us back into a time period that we're used to working with. I kind of turned my head away from working, so the one thing it did do was give me a little whiplash. But we were ready for it."

Mr. Ehrlich is one of the most experienced executive producers of television award shows. Prior to taking over this year's Emmys broadcast, he completed the 48th Grammy Awards -- the 27th time he has handled those duties.

"What a producer can do with a show like the Emmys is understand that the foundation of the show is basically 27 awards laced over the course of three hours. No matter what you do, that's the throughline," said Mr. Ehrlich. "With the Grammys, I have the luxury of 18 performances that I can put over that same time slot. With the Emmys, it's a little different; it's not about music. We understand that the spontaneity and the acceptance speeches and the fun from the unplanned moments of people getting up when their names are called can result in great humor, and hopefully there's emotion. It's our job to take those moments in between and try to fill them with pieces and different things."

Still to be decided is who will be hosting the show. Could Conan O'Brien be back for a second stint? Mr. Ehrlich cannot say. "Conan was wonderful last year; he really put himself into the show and he was great to work with. Two years ago it was Ellen DeGeneres, and in a different way, she was just as involved."

Mr. Lythgoe and Mr. Warwick hadn't made any major plans when Mr. Ehrlich came on board. "We were given a clean slate. I don't think they had really started working on the Emmys. They may have thought about it, but I don't think they had done anything," he said.

"Without mentioning a name, there was one person we were interested in as host for the show," Mr. Ehrlich said. "When I went to this person -- someone that we really liked -- I was totally surprised. Nobody had told me, and nobody had told the people at the academy, that Nigel and Ken had talked to this person about hosting the show. So by the time I asked him, he had already turned the show down once. That was a little awkward, but he was very gracious about it. But it was not the way I would have liked to see it play out. "

The Emmy show is still early in the planning stages, but there are some special elements being considered. "With a show like this, you have an opportunity to look back because the Emmy means so much and has such value," said Mr. Ehrlich. "People tend to hook into anniversaries that end in fives or a zero. This year, for instance -- and I'm not saying we're going to do it, but it's kind of a template for what we might do -- it's the 30th anniversary of 'Roots.' That was certainly an anthemic series for television. It had so much impact in so many ways. Our plan is, hopefully, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of 'Roots.'"

One of the highlights from every Emmy broadcast is the tributes, such as last year's celebration for Dick Clark and the posthumous salute to Aaron Spelling. "Two years ago we did one that was, for many people, the most moving part of the show, and that was our tribute to the three retiring anchormen," said Mr. Ehrlich. "Two were there, and obviously one, Peter Jennings, wasn't. That turned out to be a very emotional moment for the show because Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and Peter Jennings, all three of them, had meant so much to us over all these years. That is something that we can do, and there are a couple of things along those lines that we're exploring this year -- celebrating the achievement of people whose lives have been intertwined with ours through television."

Comic clips and montage features also make for memorable Emmy moments. "Because you're dealing with primarily the previous year in television, the thing that we always try to bring to the shows is what happened the past year. When you look at the show we did last year, other than the career achievements, most of the humor that came out of the show and some of the pieces we did were reflective of what happened," said Mr. Ehrlich, recalling an opening takeoff on "Lost" that incorporated Mr. O'Brien with Jorge Garcia from the ABC drama series.

Looking ahead, Mr. Ehrlich plans a news-oriented clip feature. "The Emmy show has never really looked at what happened in the previous year in the news generally, not just pop culture, through the eyes of the late-night hosts and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and all the comics on television who do monologues," he said. "One of the things that I want to do that is in the works now is a nonstop overlap montage of one-liners in two or three minutes. We'll look back on the past year through the eyes of some really great writers and comics. Also, I would not be surprised -- he said a little bit cryptically -- to see some homage to 'The Sopranos' on the show this year. You might be surprised with what we're going to do with it."

For Ken Ehrlich, executive producer, the goal is clear. "The war cry is always, 'What are we going to do and how are we going to make it better?'" he said. "Certainly the last couple of years, we've been very pleased and the academy has been very pleased. We did some inventive things, we changed it up, we tried to make it a little more contemporary, a little younger. But at the same time we understand that this is the industry's big night. This means something and we can't trivialize it. But we certainly can have some fun with it."

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