Netflix Sets Record With 23 Emmys
According to Bloomberg, Netflix Inc. won the most Emmy awards of any TV network on Monday, which is a huge accomplishment for the company that got its start as a DVD-by-mail business.
Netflix earned 23 awards overall. It’s biggest awards were for The Crown — which is a period drama about the British royal family — and Godless, which is a Western miniseries. But despite these wins, it was still denied the industry’s highest honors. It didn’t win anything in any of the three most prestigious categories and lost to rivals FX, HBO, and Amazon.com Inc.
HBO won the outstanding drama award for Game of Thrones. It was the third time in four years that the show has won. According to CNN, HBO will be airing the last season of Game of Thrones in 2019. HBO also tied with Netflix for the most Emmy awards in total, winning 23 as well.
These results show the heightened competition between streaming services — like Netflix and Hulu — against traditional television companies like HBO and FX. Streaming services won 12 of the Emmy’s featured awards and 35 in total. Five of those awards went to Amazon. Amazon also won best comedy series — the first time that a streaming service has won that award. Amazon won all of its awards for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, a show about a Jewish housewife in the 1950’s who becomes a stand-up comic.
Last year Hulu became the first streaming service to win the outstanding drama Emmy for The Handmaid’s Tale — which is an adaptation of the dystopian novel of the same name penned by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid’s Tale was shut out of the competition this year by Netflix and Amazon.
Netflix currently has the most subscribers of any streaming service, and has surpassed almost every major media company in spending — primarily to generate original content and original intellectual properties. John Mulaney — a writer and comedian — has struggled to succeed on traditional TV, eventually finding success on Netflix. He took home an Emmy — a dream once thought impossible for someone of his relatively modest profile — for his comedy special, John Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous at Radio City. Others like Mulaney have flocked to Netflix because of its creative freedom and substantial budgets.
Netflix started this trend in 2013, when the company debuted House of Cards starring Kevin Spacey. Since then, dozens of filmmakers, writers, and producers have followed in their footsteps. Over the last few years, top TV creators Jenji Kohan, Ryan Murphy, and Shonda Rhimes have started making shows exclusively for Netflix.
According to Deadline, Netflix’s strategy is probably paying off. Not only did they make history at the Emmys, but shortly after the awards ceremony, the company’s stock went up by more than two percentage points — reaching nearly $359 a share.
