After months of speculation and a surprisingly intense campaign season, we finally know which shows will be competing to win the 2025 Emmy for Outstanding Talk Series.
In a special early-morning announcement on CBS Mornings, the TV Academy revealed this year’s official nominees: The Daily Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
If that feels like a very short list, it is. As we’ve previously reported, Emmy rules and shifts in the late-night television landscape conspired this year to reduce the number of eligible nominees in the category to just three. A total of 13 shows submitted themselves for consideration—down from 14 in 2024 and 15 in 2023. Under Television Academy rules, when a category has between eight and nineteen submissions, the number of nominees is determined by dividing the number of entries by four and rounding to the nearest whole number.
With 13 submissions this year, that formula yielded just three official nominees, kicking Late Night with Seth Meyers, which has been nominated the last three years, off the final list.
This year’s pool of submissions painted a telling picture of the evolving late-night landscape. In addition to Colbert, Kimmel, Meyers, Fallon, and The Daily Show, the field also included Netflix’s Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney, Hart to Heart on Peacock, Hot Ones on YouTube, CNN’s Have I Got News For You, Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, and Dropout’s Very Important People.The biggest curveball? Midnight Snack with Julie Chan, a seven-episode series that premiered on the streamer ASIAN AMERICAN MOVIES (AAM.tv) last fall.
Outstanding Talk Series and its late-night compatriot Outstanding Scripted Variety Series and have long been square pegs in the Emmy ecosystem. Prior to 2015, variety series and talk shows competed in a single “Outstanding Variety, Music, or Comedy Series” category—meaning shows like The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson would compete against Saturday Night Live.
SNL and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver are widely expected to be the only nominees in the Outstanding Scripted Variety Series category, but we’ll find out for sure when the rest of the Emmy nominations are announced later today at 11:30am ET/8:30am PT.
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I like Kimmel but Seth has to be in ahead of him
Fuck no!