Why ‘Saturday Night Live’ Is Getting Screwed by the Emmys

With the exception of a few soap operas and current affairs programs, no television show has aired longer than NBC’s. Saturday night livewhich will begin its 50th season on September 28. And with the 76th Emmy Awards coming up just weeks before that, it’s the most celebrated show in the event’s history. In fact, SNL holds the record for most Emmy nominations with 341 (Game of Thrones is second with 159) and wins with 89 (Got it is second with 59). And Lorne Michaels, its creator and supervisor for all but five of its seasons, holds the record for most Emmy nominations 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 Nevins and her 31).

Given the history, it can be hard to feel sorry for SNL and Michaels when it comes to the Emmys — but this year, I’m doing it.

For SNLDuring its 49th season, the series received 17 nominations, more than any other network show of any type, across a wide range of categories. The highest honor for which it is nominated is Outstanding Scripted Variety Series, a category in which the only other nominee is the HBO series Last Week Tonight with John Oliverwhich is similar to SNL but it’s also a weekly, often funny, and, well, television show. How did it get to the point where two of the best, albeit completely different, shows on television are lumped together, resulting in one of them losing the first Emmy it’s eligible for every time the two share a category? This year, the likely result is that SNL This will be the show for the second year in a row.

There used to be just one category called Best Variety Series, which pitted talk shows against each other (e.g., The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson And Late Show with David Letterman) and sketch shows (for example, The Carol Burnett Show, SCTV Network, In living colors and yes, SNL). But given the proliferation of networks and, consequently, late-night talk shows, the TV Academy created two separate categories in 2015: best variety talk series and best variety sketch series.

In the category of various sketch series, SNL was a permanent nominee alongside a rotating host of other, more recent shows on the scene — At Home with Amy Sedaris; Billy on the street!; Black Woman Sketch Show; Documentary now!; Drunkenness story; I Love You, America with Sarah Silverman; Inside Amy Schumer; Key and Peele; Portlandia; The Tracey Ullman Show; And Who is America? — many of which were clearly inspired by SNL and two of them also counted Michaels as an EP (Documentary now! And Portlandia). Schumer won in 2015, and Key and Peele won in 2016, but SNL he has won every year from 2017 (when he had a show record and led the field with 22 nominations) through 2022.

The category of varied debate series, meanwhile, included shows broadcast four or five times a week, such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart And Jimmy Kimmel…