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With the exception of a few soap operas and public affairs programs, no TV show has been on the air longer than NBC’s Saturday Night Live, which will embark on its 50th season Sept. 28. And as we approach the 76th Emmys, which will take place just a few weeks before that, it is the most celebrated show in the history of that event. Indeed, SNL holds the records for most Emmy nominations with 341 (Game of Thrones is second with 159) and wins with 89 (GoT is second with 59). And Lorne Michaels, its creator and overseer for all but five of its seasons, holds the record for most Emmy noms for an individual with 106 (Sheila Nevins is second with 77) and has racked up the second most wins for an individual with 21 (behind only Nevins’ 31).
Given that history, it may be hard to feel sorry for SNL and Michaels when it comes to the Emmys — but this year, I do.
For SNL‘s very solid 49th season, the show received 17 nominations — more than any other show of any kind from a broadcast network — spread across a wide array of categories. The highest honor for which it’s nominated is best scripted variety series, a category in which the only other nominee is HBO’s Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, which is similar to SNL only in that it also is a once-a-week program, frequently funny and, well, on television. How did we get to the point where two of TV’s best shows, despite being completely different, wound up thrust together, leading to one of them losing the top Emmy for which it’s eligible every time the pair share a category? This year, the likely result is that SNL will be that show for the second year in a row.
There used to be a single category called best variety series, which pitted against one another talk shows (e.g., The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Late Show With David Letterman) and sketch shows (e.g., The Carol Burnett Show, SCTV Network, In Living Color and, yes, SNL). But given the proliferation of networks and, consequently, late night talk shows, the TV Academy in 2015 created two separate categories: best variety talk series and best variety sketch series.
In the variety sketch series category, SNL was a perennial nominee alongside a rotating host of other shows newer to the scene — At Home With Amy Sedaris; Billy on the Street!; A Black Lady Sketch Show; Documentary Now!; Drunk History; I Love You, America With Sarah Silverman; Inside Amy Schumer; Key & Peele; Portlandia; Tracey Ullman’s Show; and Who Is America? — several of which clearly were inspired by SNL and two of which also counted Michaels as an EP (Documentary Now! and Portlandia). Schumer won in 2015, and Key & Peele won in 2016, but SNL won in every year from 2017 (when it landed a show-record and field-co-leading 22 noms) through 2022.
The variety talk series category, meanwhile, included shows that aired four or five times a week, like The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and those that aired just once a week, such as Real Time With Bill Maher, Full Frontal With Samantha Bee and Last Week Tonight. The Daily Show, for Stewart’s last season as its anchor (at least until 2024), beat Last Week Tonight the first time it was nominated, in 2015; but then Last Week Tonight won every year from 2016 through 2022, causing people associated with its competitors — most of whom had to turn out quality TV far more frequently — to grow increasingly annoyed.
That ultimately led to a category reset that went into effect for the 2023 Emmys: Best talk series would recognize shows in which “a significant portion of the running time consists of unscripted interviews or panel discussions,” even if they also include “scripted elements and other aspects of a variety series such as monologues, musical performances, etc.”; and best scripted variety series would recognize shows that are “primarily scripted or feature loosely scripted improv and consist of discrete scenes, musical numbers, monologues, comedy stand-ups, sketches, etc.,” even if they “occasionally feature unscripted elements.”
But the problem — as was evident last year, the first year of these categories, when there were just three scripted variety series nominees (the same two as this year, plus A Black Lady Sketch Show) and Last Week Tonight won — is twofold: 1) Last Week Tonight is nothing like SNL; and 2) virtually nothing else on TV today really is.
Most of the aforementioned sketch shows have permanently ended. A Black Lady Sketch Show hasn’t but is on hiatus. And TV Academy rules now tie the number of nominees in a category to the number of shows that were eligible for a nom, of which there were only two others this season for scripted variety series — CBS’ After Midnight and HBO/Max’s Painting With John — which is why we ended up with just two nominees this year.
There must be a better solution to the debate over how to evaluate nightly versus weekly talk shows than to dump a weekly talk show in a category with the preeminent sketch series on TV. The TV Academy should either go back to a single variety category that includes all of the above sorts of shows (hardly ideal, to me); or, if they are OK with having categories with as few as two nominees, as appears to be the case, then create categories called best weekly talk series and best sketch series and let Last Week Tonight and SNL both have a shot at recognition for the areas in which they excel, regardless of the number of competitors they may face.
But to continue to pit them against each other is to compare apples and oranges and is simply unfair.
This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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