Late-Night Category To Remain On Primetime Emmy's

By Andrew Sanford | TV | January 4, 2024 |

By Andrew Sanford | TV | January 4, 2024 |

Entertainment award shows are weird. If something I like wins, I’m all about them. “Yes, please, validate my tastes!” When something I’m not fond of wins, I question the whole process. “Why do we even have awards? It’s all subjective!” Like them or not, they are a part of the industry. Awards allow creatives a shorthand (ideally). They open doors that would otherwise be closed. The pomp, circumstance, and display can be as important as the award. So it makes sense that late-night writers were none too pleased to see their category taken off the air.

In November, the Emmys announced they would remove the Outstanding Writing In A Variety Series category from the broadcast, replacing it with Outstanding Writing In A Variety Special. The WGA did not care for this change. They encouraged members to protest the decision, resulting in a petition signed by over 1,400 members, including Pajiba favorite Amber Ruffin. In short, it worked!

As reported at Deadline, the WGA and the Television Academy (who run the Emmys) reached an agreement, and the category will air as it should. It also gives the writing staff at Last Week Tonight the chance to win the award for the eighth year in a row! I gasped when I read that statistic, but it makes complete sense. I love late-night TV, but what LWT does is on a whole other level. That will likely keep it safe from one of the bigger implications of the Television Academy’s decision to remove the category.

I’ve said it here before (and it brings me no pleasure to do so), but late-night as we know it is dying. Yes, people still like interviews and silly sketches, but placing that material on a show that airs after 11 PM is becoming less financially viable. You need only look at the productions themselves to see that they don’t have the same budgets. Shows like Last Week Tonight skirt around this issue, but that’s a result of not having a four/five-show-a-week schedule. So they are more than able to blow up big set pieces or purchase rat erotica.

I don’t know if the Television Academy sees the same signs I (and others) do. Since award shows can be boiled down to popularity contests, I would argue that they do. Still, late-night fought back, which does give me hope. I have no idea what the landscape will look like in five years, but I do think that this is a sign of things to come.