Emmy Analysis: Voters Obsess Over Their Faves, but Make a Little Room for Newcomers

The remnants of the pandemic and the double whammy of 2023’s writers and actors strikes dealt a serious blow to the television landscape last year, and Emmy voters sifted through the rubble and found a few new shows they liked and a few old ones that were still hanging on in Wednesday’s nominations .

And when in doubt, they did what they usually do: They obsessed over their favorite shows by voting for everybody who had anything to do with them.

It wasn’t quite as blatant has it has been in some recent years, when entire categories were divvied up between two programs and when “Succession” set a new record with 14 acting nominations in 2022 and then did it again in 2023. But the nominations for 10 different actors from “The Bear,” 10 from “The Morning Show” and seven each from “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” and “Only Murders in the Building” were a clear sign that members of the Television Academy may still struggle with the volume of material they’re asked to consider even in a slow year, and that they’re less interested in sharing the wealth than in embracing their favorites with a vengeance.

The difference is that this year, they had to come up with more new favorites than usual. Until 2024, “The Morning Show” had never been nominated for Outstanding Drama Series, despite being eligible on multiple occasions; neither had “Slow Horses” and “The Gilded Age” in drama or “Reservation Dogs” in comedy.  But this year, with old favorites missing in action because they’d either gone off the air or had their production delayed by the strikes, voters had little choice but to decide that they liked those shows after all.

The only repeat nominee in the Outstanding Drama Series category is “The Crown,” because it’s the only one of last year’s nominees that was eligible again this year. But beyond that, “The Crown” is the only one of the eight nominees that has ever been nominated in the category before – a situation that hadn’t occurred in 50 years, not since “The Waltons” was the only past nominee to receive a nod in 1974. (And the category had only five nominees back then.)

Incumbents fared better in the Outstanding Comedy Series category because more of them were eligible, with last year’s nominees “Abbott Elementary,” “The Bear” and “Only Murders in the Building” back and joined by “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Hacks,” which weren’t eligible last year but had been nominated in past years – twice for “Hacks” and 10 times for “Curb,” which now ties “Cheers” and “M*A*S*H” as the category’s most-nominated (and so far losingest) show.

The nominations have the appearance of Emmy voters doing what they could with the hand they were dealt – and it must be said from the start that this is an odd, awkward Emmy year. Fewer shows qualified, which means that fewer programs and people were nominated: Of the 24 categories that are presented on the primetime telecast every year, nine of them – almost 40% – have fewer nominees this year than they did last year. And fewer weeks will pass between January’s 75th Primetime Emmy Awards telecast and September’s 76th Emmys, the shortest-ever gap between shows after the 2023 ceremony detoured into 2024 because of the strikes.

This will be the first calendar year ever to have two Primetime Emmy ceremonies (and four Creative Arts Emmys ceremonies, if you’re keeping track) – and even though it has been a full year since last year’s nominations and voting took place, it still feels like both a skimpy Emmys and a rushed Emmys.

But that’s what voters had to deal with in what is an unsettled and unsettling time for the entertainment industry (and for everything else).

In that atmosphere, it’s hardly surprising that the trend of recent years – in which a handful of shows have hogged an inordinate number of acting nominations – continued strongly. For the second year in a row, seven different shows received at least five acting nominations, with those seven shows – “The Bear,” “The Morning Show,” “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” “Only Murders in the Building,” “The Crown,” “Hacks” and “Shogun” – grabbing more than half of all the acting nominations.

Some of that was expected, including “The Bear” taking three of the six noms for guest actor in a comedy. But the dominance shown by “The Morning Show” in the supporting actor and actress category came as a shock, with the program taking three of the seven noms in supporting actor and four of the seven in supporting actress.

As we’ve written before, this concentration of high-profile nominations in a few shows isn’t a good look for the Television Academy, particularly when it means that deserving shows like “I’m a Virgo,” “Lawmen: Bass Reeves” and “Expats” are bypassed completely on the acting front. But shows like “The Bear” and “Shōgun”are undeniably built around strong ensembles, so you can’t really fault voters for wanting to reach beyond the leads on those programs.

Still, it’d be nice to leave room for a few more of the kind of  welcome surprises that came when D’Pharoah Woon-a-Tai delivered the first-ever acting nomination for “Reservation Dogs,” which had been almost completely overlooked by Emmy voters until this season, or when Gary Oldman and Jack Lowden were both recognized for “Slow Horses,” the British slow burn drama that should have been on voters’ radar before this.

Overall, the nominations reinforced what we were already feeling – that “Shōgun” is probably the favorite in the drama category, that “The Bear” is a clear leader in comedy and that “Baby Reindeer” may have an edge in the fiercely competitive limited series categories.

And yes, the fact that “The Bear” is now the all-time record holder in nominations by a comedy in a single year will no doubt lead to plenty more people suggesting that “The Bear” isn’t a comedy.

Meanwhile, the variety categories are more of a mess than ever, with the talk series category dropping down to four nominees and scripted variety dropping to a paltry two, with “Saturday Night Live” (the most-nominated show in Emmy history) and “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” (eight straight wins over two different program categories) forced to score 70% approval from a special panel of volunteers to even become eligible for nominations because the category had so few entries.

The Emmys need to figure out what to do with those categories – and maybe, while they’re at it, they should decide whether Outstanding Limited Series deserves to be expanded to a flat eight nominees the way the top drama and comedy categories are. (Short answer to that question: Yes.)

But those are problems for later. For now, it’s time for some campaigning, a lot of TV watching, a couple of weeks of voting and then a bit of celebrating as they put a bow on this strangest of Emmy years.

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