Stephen Colbert’s Powerful ‘Late Show’ Earns First-Ever Emmy Amid Show’s End
The Late Show Finally Gets Its Due: Colbert’s Emmy Win Feels Like a Consolation Prize Well, well, well. Look who finally got some love from the Television Academy. After nearly a decade of getting snubbed harder than a kid asking for candy at the dentist’s office, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert finally snagged its first Emmy at Sunday’s Creative Arts ceremony. And honestly? It’s about damn time.
The Late Show’s Long Road to Emmy Recognition
The CBS Late Show earned the Outstanding Directing for a Variety Series award, specifically for director Jim Hoskinson’s work on the episode titled “David Oyelowo, Finn Wolfhard, Special Appearance by Alan Cumming, Performance by Ok Go.” That’s quite the mouthful for what essentially amounts to “that one episode where everything just clicked perfectly.”
Let’s talk numbers for a hot second. Since its debut in 2015, Colbert’s Late Show has racked up an impressive 33 Emmy nominations. That’s right—33 swings and misses before finally connecting. According to Variety, this made it “the second most-nominated show in Emmy history without a win, trailing only AMC’s Better Call Saul, which infamously lost all 53 of its nominations across its six-season run.”
Ouch. That’s got to sting worse than accidentally biting your tongue while eating soup. The irony here is thicker than molasses on a cold day. Colbert himself already has 10 Emmys collecting dust on his shelf from his Colbert Report days, and his recent special with the wonderfully pretentious title Stephen Colbert’s Election Night 2020: Democracy’s Last Stand: Building Back America Great Again Better 2020. But somehow, his actual Late Show couldn’t catch a break until now.
Here’s where things get spicy. Many industry insiders are viewing this Emmy win as the Television Academy’s not-so-subtle middle finger to CBS’s controversial decision to cancel The Late Show. The network claimed it was “purely a financial decision” when they dropped the axe in July, but let’s be real—timing is everything in showbiz.
Variety reported that “many see the awarding of the series as a reaction to the outcry over CBS’s controversial decision to cancel ‘The Late Show’ for what the network cited as ‘financial reasons.'” Translation: The Emmy voters basically said, “You cancelled WHAT now? It’s impossible to talk about The Late Show without acknowledging the giant shadow cast by David Letterman.
The Letterman Legacy Looms Large
When Dave hosted from 1993 to 2015, the show was an Emmy darling, winning nine statuettes, including seven for outstanding variety series. Those were the golden years when The Late Show actually mattered in the awards conversation. But all good things must come to an end, and that streak died a brutal death in 2003 when The Daily Show With Jon Stewart crashed the party and ushered in what we now call “the new era of late-night dominance.”
Suddenly, everyone wanted to be the next Jon Stewart, and traditional late-night formats started feeling as outdated as flip phones. Colbert wasn’t the only late-night host celebrating on Sunday. Jimmy Kimmel snagged an Emmy for hosting Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, while Conan O’Brien picked up not one but two awards—one for “Conan O’Brien Must Go” and another for the special documenting his Mark Twain Prize win at the Kennedy Center.
It’s almost like the Television Academy suddenly remembered that late-night television exists and decided to throw everyone a bone. Better late than never, right? Look, let’s not kid ourselves here. This Emmy win feels less like a celebration of current excellence and more like a “sorry we’re cancelling your show, here’s a participation trophy” gesture. The Late Show still has one more shot at glory.
That one more shot at triumph is the nomination for Outstanding Scripted Nonfiction Program at the main ceremony on September 14, but honestly, this directing win might be all she wrote. The whole situation leaves a bitter taste that no amount of Emmy gold can wash away. Here’s a show that spent nearly a decade proving itself, building an audience, and contributing meaningfully to the late-night landscape, only to get the boot right when it finally gets some awards recognition.
Final Thoughts
