Joan Rivers Missing From the Emmy Red Carpet?

Joan and Melissa Rivers are all dressed up with nowhere to go.

The mother-daughter duo, queens of the red carpet, apparently will be no-shows this fall at what has been one of their highest-rated performances: the Emmy Awards.

The Rivers team shifted alliances this summer, leaving E! Entertainment Television for a lucrative contract with the TV Guide Channel, which raided its rival to propel its ratings.

But E! has exclusive cable TV rights to broadcast live from the red carpet before the Sept. 19 Emmy telecast on ABC, preventing the Riverses from doing what their new bosses hired them to do: give viewers the feeling of being among the stars as the evening unfolds.

E!’s contract with the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which puts on the Emmys, gives it cable exclusivity not only this year but in 2005 as well.

Sources said TV Guide was scrambling, having agreed to pay the Riverses $6 million over the next three years, much more than they made at Comcast Corp.-controlled E!.

E!’s contract with the academy came as no surprise to the TV Guide Channel, but executives “thought we could work it out” with the academy, said Chris Levesque, spokeswoman for Gemstar-TV Guide International Inc., which owns the TV Guide Channel.

“We find it puzzling that the academy would strike a deal that limits the promotion of their flagship event and deprives fans of Joan and Melissa, the two personalities that personify the red carpet and that viewers tune in to see.”

The Riverses declined to comment.

The academy said it wanted to make the TV Guide Channel happy but that its hands were tied. “We’re trying to look at some creative ways we can work with TV Guide,” said Laurel Whitcomb, vice president of marketing at the academy.

Levesque said the TV Guide Channel was focusing on the other awards shows that would air next year and on several additional projects with the Riverses.

“We’re not planning to do the Emmys this year,” Levesque said.

Sources at the channel, however, said it was still trying to reach a deal with the academy or with E!

None of the other major awards shows, such as the Grammys or the Oscars, gives exclusive red-carpet rights to any television outlet. Some TV Guide sources said that fact was one reason that E!’s arrangement with the academy was worth further inspection.