What’s The Most Iconic TV Show In Emmys History?

Television is a rapidly evolving medium, so Emmy categories come and go with its trends. In this year’s Emmys, which air on Sunday, we have “Outstanding Structured Reality Program”; in the ’50s we had “Best Continuing Performance (Female) in a Series by a Comedienne, Singer, Hostess, Dancer, M.C., Announcer, Narrator, Panelist or Any Person Who Essentially Plays Herself.”¹ And while we’ve now hit the point where the difference between a “comedy” and a “drama” is how long you’re expected to sit down and watch an episode of television, it’s still possible to find where different shows had their strengths historically.

To get ready for this year’s show I decided to take a trip through Emmy history. I pulled every Emmy nomination listed by IMDb, and broke them into one of four categories: Emmys for a performance, for writing or direction, for tech (anything from hair and costumes to visual special effects) and for overall show. Since all the nominees are nominated by their peers in each category, this can give us a broad look at which shows moved the bar forward in their time.

I looked at the percentage of a program’s Emmy nominations that fell into each category. This allowed me to find, for instance, which shows won their acclaim from the work behind the scenes: the music, the makeup, the production design and the editing.²

Tech advances are where “Star Trek” really sings. “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” “Deep Space Nine,” “Voyager” and “Enterprise” racked up a combined 141 nominations in their time, all but one of which was in the tech category. If you want a makeup and costume nomination, casting a Klingon tends to make your point pretty quickly. Other programs that pulled massive hauls from the tech set include period pieces such as “Rome,” “The Tudors,” “Band of Brothers” and “The Borgias,” and science fiction material like “Battlestar Galactica” and “The Walking Dead.”

When it comes to writing and directing, it’s late night and comedy that really come out ahead. The late shows of David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert all pulled sizable chunks of their nominations in these categories. So too did sketch shows like “Inside Amy Schumer,” “Portlandia” and “SCTV Network.”

Programs that pulled most or all of their nominations from the overall show award categories are some combination of two kinds of television not really recognized elsewhere in the Emmys. Some have stripped down production, a lack of acting and minimal writing. “Nick News with Linda Ellerbee,” “Inside the Actors Studio” and “Antiques Roadshow” are stellar examples. Others are animated shows: “South Park,” “Adventure Time,” “Futurama” and “Robot Chicken” don’t easily get recognized in other categories that skew towards live action, but they get recognized here. Somewhere in the middle of the two lies “Sesame Street.”

The shows that Emmy recognizes almost entirely for their performances are an interesting bunch. They’re character-driven shows — often police procedurals or sitcoms — that have a versatile cast and can often pull on lots of easy one-shot guest actor nominations. “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” is the ur-example here.

So these are all shows that skew in one direction or another. What does a perfectly balanced Emmy nominated show look like? Across the whole set of nominated programs, on average 25 percent of the nominations were for performances, 14 percent for writing and directing, 43 percent for one of the tech categories and 18 percent for the show overall. I tried to find the show that looked closest to that.³

The closest shows are “Designing Women” and “Northern Exposure” — two CBS shows of the early ’90s — and right smack after those two comes one of the most recognizable programs of the past decade: “Mad Men.” This makes a lot of sense; the show was well made, with many episodes highlighted for writing and direction, some beloved performances and — set in the ’60s — a meticulously crafted production design. It’s one of the best shows ever and one of the most evenly acclaimed.

And when you combine all that well-rounded balance with its 116 Emmy nominations, the fourth-most ever and far more than “Designing Women and “Northern Exposure,” “Mad Men” seems to be the most iconic show in Emmys history.