And the Emmy goes to… any number of late-night shows.
The TV Academy has once again made changes to the late-night and variety categories at the Emmys, merging the two categories starting this year and introducing a new system that could see multiple shows win an Emmy.
The move, which was just voted on by the TV Academy’s Board of Governors, could see the likes of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert all win an Emmy come September.
Firstly, the Academy is merging the Outstanding Talk Series and Outstanding Scripted Variety Series categories due to a “reduced number of submissions”. This is not a surprise given that there were only 13 submissions in the Outstanding Talk Series category last year, leading to a category of The Daily Show, The Late Show and JKL! In Variety, SNL went head-to-head against Last Week Tonight in a strange new system that saw it judged by a separate jury.
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These two categories were previously merged until 2015 when Outstanding Variety Series was turned into Outstanding Variety Sketch Series and Outstanding Talk Series.
The TV Academy said that from 2026 the merged category will be “tracked” so that nominees will be “proportional” to the number of submissions received for each format. This means that, for instance, had this been the case in 2025, Scripted Variety would have two nominees and Talk would have three.
The organization said that tracking this would allow for an “automatic split of the category when there is a resurgence in the number of variety programs”.
Arguably, that’s more of an “if” than a “when” given that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has been canceled and will not be around to compete in next year’s Emmys and there’s hardly a plethora of new sketch shows launching.
It said that the categories would “split without needing review or a vote from the board when both formats reach 20 submissions in any given year”.
Then, comes the really strange part: the Academy is “reclassifying” the Outstanding Variety Series category as an “area award”, which it said could result in “multiple” winners.
“In an area award, nominees are judged individually on their own merits. Instead of Emmy voters selecting one nominee to win, voters must answer for each nominee: ‘Does this nominee merit an Emmy? Yes/No.’ Any nominee who reaches a 90% ‘Yes’ threshold receives an Emmy, providing the opportunity for multiple winners in the category. If no nominee reaches the 90% threshold, the nominee with the highest ‘Yes’ percentage receives an Emmy,” it noted.
How this will work in practice on the night if a number of these shows get above 90% is anyone’s guess. Given the popularity of shows such as Last Week Tonight, SNL, The Daily Show and The Late Show, which have all recently won Emmys, plus Jimmy Kimmel’s recent travails meaning that he is likely a frontrunner for the award this year, could they all win? We’ll find out soon, it seems.
The late-night community has long had issues with the Emmys. Back in 2022, a group of showrunners, led by Ben Winston, then showrunner of The Late Late Show with James Corden, successfully campaigned the TV Academy to cement a fifth nomination. A year later, Last Week Tonight was moved into a new category – Outstanding Scripted Variety Series – to compete against SNL and last year, the talk category was reduced to only four nominations.