For seven years, if your name wasn't John Oliver, you were just happy to be nominated in the talk show category at the Emmys.
Host RuPaul on the DNC finale, a new, crazy Trump product and he reveals his campaign platform
Between 2016 and 2022, HBO’s “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” dominated the category, a streak surpassed only by Oliver’s former employer, “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” which won best talk show for the entire decade between 2003 and 2012. That remains the longest winning streak for a primetime series in Emmy history.
But the category hasn’t been without change in recent years. Until 2015, late-night talk shows competed with shows like “Saturday Night Live” in the variety series category. Then the Television Academy split the 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 now competes with “Saturday Night Live.” (If you’re lost, you’re not alone.)
Now that talk shows have become a category of their own, 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.
