The 2018 Emmy Awards nominations are here, and they're full of familiar regulars, shocking snubs and awesome first-timers. And to be expected, it was a pretty magnificent day for HBO, which came away with 108 total nominations when all was said and done. Unfortunately for the network, Netflix topped that total with 112 nominations, marking the first time in 18 years that HBO isn't the most-nominated TV entity. (In third place, for context, is NBC's 78 nominations.) It's yet another signal that the streaming behemoth is a power-player like no other.
Though Netflix only won out by just four nominations for the 2018 Primetime Emmy Awards, that's all it took to topple the longtime defending champion when it comes to amassing awards-seeking acclaim. And it's pretty interesting the ways the facts play out, too, with the numbers going in HBO's favor when accounting for shows garnering over five nominations each. It looks like Netflix's extremely dense annual programming slate just generally had more shows available to pick up nominations.
For instance, HBO had three of the top ten most nominated shows, with Game of Thrones beating all else with 22, Westworld earning 21, and freshman comedy Barry getting 13. Next up was Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, which landed nine noms, and it was followed by Silicon Valley with seven, and Fahrenheit 451 with five. Those six shows earned a total of 77 nominations between them.
Meanwhile, Netflix's highest ranking show is The Crown, which tied Barry with 13 nominations. And while Netflix can't boast any shows with 20+ nominations, Godless and Stranger Things both earned twelve, with GLOW getting ten, so there was some balance there. Netflix had another three projects that fell into the "five and over" group: Black Mirror episode "USS Callister," with seven nominations; Ozark with five; and the highly popular docu-series Wild Wild Country also with five nods. That's just 64, which is 13 less than HBO's total number.
But again, that doesn't account for the plethora of projects that nabbed fewer than five nominations, including the talk show My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, comedy specials from acts like Dave Chappelle, comedies like Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and more. HBO obviously also had its own lower-tired nominees like Curb Your Enthusiasm and Insecure, but Netflix's deeper slate of unscripted shows definitely helps swing things in the streaming company's favor. I'm pretty sure Queer Eye could be nominated as both Drama and Comedy, as well as Structured Reality, and so on, and so on.
With a whopping 220 nominations between them, Netflix and HBO are certainly the two to watch when the 2018 Primetime Emmy Awards air on NBC on Monday, September 17, at 8:00 p.m. ET. Check out how the more financially sound HBO is trying to be more like Netflix, and then head to our summer premiere schedule to see what's heading to the small screen soon.
