2025 Emmy Nominations: A Familiar Pattern Emerges

Published: July 16, 2025

By Robert Lloyd, Television Critic

July 16, 2025 11:59 AM PT

Congratulations to all the 2025 Emmy nominees! While the nominees are a talented bunch, it's hard not to notice a familiar pattern emerging. Many of the shows and actors nominated are repeat offenders, with a handful of shows dominating the nominations.

As I've written before, awards for creative work are somewhat arbitrary, and winning is nice, but it comes with tangible benefits. However, for those who didn't receive a nomination, it's worth noting that the lack of official recognition is essentially meaningless. The reasonable inference is that the voters don't watch much television at all.

In fact, many series and the people who make them are unlikely to ever be considered, belonging to the wrong sort of genre, or on the wrong sort of network, or lack word-of-mouth cachet, or are too marginal or weird or have no FYC promotional budget.

So, as we head down the road to the ceremony on September 14 on CBS, I salute you, the un-nominated. Getting a show on the air, however good, is hard work, and though talent is, of course, variable, no one sets out to make bad TV.

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