Why did the Emmys tally HBO and HBO Max's Emmy nominations together?

The Hollywood Reporter

The TV Academy announced Tuesday morning that HBO and HBO Max combined for 130 nominations, barely topping Netflix's 129. According to The Hollywood Reporter, if HBO and HBO Max were separated, HBO would've collect 94 nominations and HBO Max would've received 36. The Hollywood Reporter's Lesley Goldberg points out that HBO and HBO Max are led by the same person, Casey Bloys, and reports that WarnerMedia requested that the TV Academy combine both HBO and HBO Max. "Free-spending streaming giant Netflix clocked in with a total of 129 nominations," says Goldberg. "If the nominations were tallied the way they had been in the past — separating HBO and HBO Max — Netflix would have easily topped HBO proper to lead the pack. In a press release Tuesday, WarnerMedia took a victory lap and celebrated its Emmys 'lead' with 130 nominations, noting it was the 19th time in history that the 'HBO brand' had “received the most nominations of any network/platform in a single year.' Netflix declined comment." Meanwhile, TV Academy president Maury McIntyre tells Variety it might be best if the Academy stayed out of nomination tallies in the future. "We don’t ultimately care. We’re here to honor the work," he says, adding: "We can only go off what we have given from a submission perspective. And that’s how we report it out. How was it reported to us in terms of its platform or its network, etc. But, it’s a question for me moving forward as to whether we should be inserting ourselves in that count, or just be able to say, 'yes, you want to claim that these are yours, we can say yes, that is what we are seeing, too, go at it.'"