Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, the massively acclaimed and long-running HBO program that gained greatest discuss present at every of the final 4 Critics Choice Awards ceremonies, has been pulled from Critics Choice consideration this cycle. The information comes after the group behind the present, the Critics Choice Association, tried to reclassify it as a comedy sequence, The Hollywood Reporter has realized.
Critics Choice nominations are decided by CCA nominating committees, and the CCA’s TV nominating committee not too long ago determined that solely exhibits that “contain dialog” ought to henceforth be eligible for one of the best discuss present honor. Apparently, this was born out of a need to maintain Critics Choice classes in step with Emmy classes.
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It’s true that the TV Academy, in 2023, cut up into two its greatest selection discuss sequence class, which Last Week Tonight had gained yearly since 2016 (to the annoyance of parents related to different discuss exhibits). The ensuing classes have been greatest discuss sequence and greatest scripted selection sequence. The former included exhibits like Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! wherein “a good portion of the operating time consists of unscripted interviews or panel discussions,” even when additionally they embrace “scripted components and different features of a range sequence resembling monologues, musical performances, and so forth.” Meanwhile, the latter went to exhibits like Last Week Tonight and NBC’s Saturday Night Live which might be “primarily scripted or function loosely scripted improv and include discrete scenes, musical numbers, monologues, comedy stand-ups, sketches, and so forth.,” even when they “often function unscripted components.”
However, the CCA copied solely half of what the TV Academy did. It narrowed the type of packages that might be eligible for its greatest discuss present prize, but it surely didn’t create a brand new class for the exhibits that now not met that definition (ostensibly as a result of it couldn’t create a brand new class after the submission deadline), leaving exhibits like Last Week Tonight in one thing of a no man’s land.
People near the scenario are pissed off that the change in eligibility necessities was by no means put in writing or shared with them previous to the submission deadline, and that the one resolution they have been provided upon being informed that the present was now not eligible for greatest discuss present was to enter it for consideration within the class of greatest comedy sequence. For that award, it could be competing with scripted packages resembling FX’s The Bear, ABC’s Abbott Elementary and HBO’s personal Hacks. Instead, they elected to withdraw Last Week Tonight from Critics Choice consideration altogether.
Both HBO and the CCA declined to remark for this piece, however I’m listening to that the CCA management acknowledges the awkwardness of this example and shall be re-evaluating its classes forward of the following awards cycle.
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