HBO: three letters form one powerful word in the world of entertainment. Today, HBO is known as a juggernaut in the domain of prestige television, especially when it comes to award season. Few networks clean up at the Emmys as reliably as HBO. When one Emmy fixture like The Sopranos or Succession ends, HBO seems to have another hit drama on the horizon ready to take over as the current beloved object of the Emmys.
But the narrative of HBO being such a dominant force to be reckoned with at the Emmys didn’t begin with Logan Roy’s company or even Tony Soprano’s mobster empire. HBO’s technically been around since the 1970s and its history connected to the Emmys is nearly lengthy.
The Earliest Days of HBO
Initially, HBO was just reliant on theatrical movies from major film studios when it came to its programming. That is where the name Home Box Office (HBO) came from, after all. It quickly became apparent, though, that HBO needed its own original productions to stand out in the marketplace. In the 1980s, the network began making forays into this field with projects like Fraggle Rock and anthology programs like The Hitchhiker. Interestingly, heady dramas, the source of many of HBO’s modern Emmys, weren’t on the network’s radar yet. Save for the short-lived Philip Marlowe, Private Eye and Maximum Security in the early 1980s, HBO wouldn’t embark on an original drama series until Oz in 1997.
Of course, HBO was being very careful with the quantity of projects it put out even for genres it was much more initially welcoming to. The network was dipping its toes into this field in the 1980s rather than embracing original programming wholeheartedly. However, the need to create some original productions, if only a handful of projects, did ensure that HBO had some potential contenders for the Emmys littered throughout the decade. Most of them did not live up to their awards potential, but finally, in 1987, HBO broke on through to the Emmys. The 1987 HBO film Mandela starred Danny Glover as Nelson Mandela, a performance that scored an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.
Today, Mandela has largely been lost to history. It’s not even currently available to stream on HBO Max. However, looking over the other contenders that year in the Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie category, one can see how significant this nomination was. Glover was competing against performances that aired on either the major networks (CBS, ABC, NBC) or in syndication. Those were the default homes of television programming up to that point. HBO getting into such a prolific category and competing against such titans of the industry was a gigantic blow against the status quo. HBO had gotten into the Emmys, and it wasn’t looking to give up its spot at the table any time soon.
HBO’s First Emmy-Nominated TV Shows
TV movies got HBO into the Emmys, but TV shows were about to keep it permanently in the conversation at this awards show. In the 1990s, HBO programming got increasingly prolific, largely bolstered by the success of The Larry Sanders Show. A breakthrough program for small-screen comedies on multiple levels, The Larry Sanders Show scored an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Comedy Program. This occasion marked the first time HBO had secured a spot in either the Outstanding Comedy or Drama program categories. Much like with Glover’s Mandela nomination, The Larry Sanders Show redefined the possibilities of where HBO productions could go at the Emmys.
For much of the 1990s, the only presence HBO had in these two categories was through The Larry Sanders Show in the Outstanding Comedy section. HBO still didn’t have any major dramas on the air and even its first foray into the field in years, Oz, didn’t score an Emmy nod for Outstanding Drama in its initial seasons. However, a harbinger of HBO’s subsequent dominance occurred at the very end of the 1990s and the 20th century as a whole. For the first time ever, HBO got programs in both Outstanding Series categories at the Emmys simultaneously. To boot, both productions were new shows: Sex and the City scored an Outstanding Comedy nod while The Sopranos secured an Outstanding Drama nomination.
The Larry Sanders Show was no longer a fluke. Sex and the City and The Sopranos each suggested that HBO could be a powerhouse at the Emmys. Beyond the two biggest categories at the Emmys, HBO had also made strong inroads at this ceremony throughout the 1990s by becoming a fixture of other major categories. In Outstanding Television Movie, for instance, HBO got its first nomination at the 41st Primetime Emmy Awards for Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story and proceeded to score annual nominations in this section. In fact, HBO outright won for seven consecutive years in the 1990s, including a two-way tie in 1993 for the productions Barbarians at the Gate and Stalin.
Meanwhile, HBO won the award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special in 1999 (only the second year of the category’s existence) for Thug Life in D.C. HBO had been excluded from the Emmy’s in the 1980s, but everything from The Larry Sanders Show to documentaries to TV movies in the 1990s established the network as an Emmys powerhouse.
The Long-Term Effects of HBO’s Emmys’ Domination
As late as the early 2000s, the Outstanding Drama and Comedy series categories at the Emmys were still dominated in terms of nominations by the major broadcast networks. HBO would get a slot, maybe two, in each category a year, but this was still territory NBC, CBS, Fox, and occasionally ABC would dominate. As late as the 63rd Emmy Awards in 2011, the major broadcast networks were still capable of entirely dominating something like the Outstanding Comedy Series category.
Cut to the most recent Emmy Awards, the 74th edition of this ceremony. There were no major broadcast networks in sight across either of the two categories save for the ABC sitcom Abbott Elementary showing up in the Outstanding Comedy Series section. FX, Hulu, and of course, HBO and HBO Max, they’re all the powerhouses of the Emmys now. It’s hard to imagine such an outcome being even comprehensible 20 years ago, but HBO’s early nominations and victories at the Emmys paved the way for this status quo. It was always just assumed that the major broadcast networks would always be in charge and run circles around everyone else at the Emmys.
HBO, however, began making history back in the 1990s, decades before its modern award season juggernauts, that would solidify its reputation as a force to be reckoned with at the Emmys. Backing creator-driven shows with unique ideas, not to mention embracing a variety of projects from comedies to documentaries, solidified that HBO both had the goods to secure awards and could dominate countless award categories. Modern HBO Emmy winners really need to thank the earlier trailblazer shows on this network in any acceptance speeches. After all, these productions made the very idea of premium cable programs winning Emmys something that could exist in reality.
