For seven years, unless your name was John Oliver, you were just happy to be nominated in the talk series category at the Emmys.
Between 2016 and 2022, HBO’s “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” dominated the category, a winning streak surpassed only by Oliver’s former employer, “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” which won the variety talk series category for the entire decade between 2003 and 2012. That remains the longest winning streak by a primetime series in Emmy history.
But the category has seen a lot of changes in recent years. Until 2015, late-night talk shows competed in the Variety Series category with shows like “Saturday Night Live.” Then the Television Academy split that category into Variety Talk Series and Variety Sketch Series. It was revised again for the 2023 Emmys, when “Last Week Tonight” was moved to the new Scripted Variety Series category, where it will now compete against “Saturday Night Live.” (If you’ve lost track, you’re not alone.)
With a separate category now in place for talk series, the door is open for traditional late-night talk shows to once again compete for an award that hasn’t been won by a broadcast series since “The Late Show With David Letterman” in 2002.
At the delayed 75th Emmys in January, Trevor Noah’s final season at the helm of “The Daily Show” won the first Emmy for a talk show. This September, the series will face the same competition again – “The Daily Show,” “Late Night With Seth Meyers,” “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”. This time, the only one missing is Apple TV+’s “The Problem With Jon Stewart,” which was canceled in October.
Late-night shows have now evolved into a category of their own, and here are the arguments for each nominee to win the Emmy:
The daily show
Following its victory, Comedy Central’s long-running political satire has the momentum to win the category again. One advantage for the show — and certainly the biggest hurdle the other nominees must overcome — is the return of Stewart, who has committed to leading the weekly Monday edition through the 2024 presidential election in November. The other shows will be hosted by a rotating team of correspondents each week. If nothing else, the Academy has had plenty of practice honoring Stewart and this astutely written show, and this nostalgic piece may be too hard to resist.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
Speaking of “The Daily Show,” the only reason their decade-long hit series ended in 2013 was because one of their former correspondents, Stephen Colbert, launched his series “The Colbert Report.” That series gained momentum and eventually displaced “The Daily Show” as the Emmy winner for two years before Colbert replaced Letterman on “The Late Show.” “Late Show,” consistently the highest-rated late-night series, had been nominated since 2017 but has never won the award.
Late Night with Seth Meyers
Seth Meyers has risen to become one of the most popular names on television, and his show has done what many simply can’t – go viral. For example, his “Day Drinking” segments with celebrities like Kristen Stewart and Dua Lipa have garnered millions of views on YouTube this season alone. It’s been a long road for Meyers and his team to get the Academy’s attention, as he wasn’t nominated until 2022, but he’s been a consistently acclaimed contender since then.
Jimmy Kimmel Live!
The longest-tenured late-night talk show host has been a fixture on ABC for more than 20 years. In addition to hosting the series, he has expanded audiences by hosting the Academy Awards four times and the Emmy Awards three times. But with Kimmel hosting for 21 years now, there’s never been a better time to honor the man Hollywood should honor.
