Bargatze pledges $100K to Boys and Girls Clubs tied to Emmy speeches

Nate Bargatze, the Nashville comedian making his debut as host of the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards Sunday at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, pledged to donate $100,000 to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America but said the final amount would rise or fall based on whether winners kept their acceptance speeches within a 45-second allotment. Bargatze unveiled the plan on Jimmy Kimmel Live ahead of the live, coast-to-coast telecast on CBS, saying he would subtract $1,000 for every second a winner went over and add $1,000 for every second a winner finished under the limit.

"Everybody gets 45 seconds to do all the thankyous," Bargatze told Kimmel, explaining the calculus of the stunt. He said he was putting up the money himself, and that children from the Boys and Girls Clubs would be in attendance to "judge" winners who might cost them funding. Bargatze acknowledged the proposal was "tough" and that he felt bad at the prospect of having to cut people off, but argued the mechanism was intended to keep the ceremony moving and reward brevity.

The opening of the broadcast played into Bargatze's comic persona. He appeared in a historical sketch as Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of...