In his Puck newsletter this week, Matt Belloni, Hollywood’s insider du jour, predicted a landslide Emmy victory for Stephen Colbert. “Now a comedy martyr,” Belloni wrote, “Colbert is a shoo-in to beat rivals The Daily Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live! in the three-horse race to win his first series Emmy for Late Show.”

Far be it for me to quibble with a star of The Studio, but the certainty with which Belloni made this claim struck me as rash. The Emmys’ tendency toward stubbornness is perhaps the institution’s defining attribute. The last ten years alone have featured Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s six-year winning streak for Veep, as well as Game of Thrones winning Outstanding Drama for its final four seasons, followed by Succession winning for its final three. The Amazing Race won the Reality Competition award for the first ten years of that show’s existence. The Emmy voter is a creature of habit, and I think it would take something major to get enough of them to drift away from their historical preference for The Daily Show — 13 wins in 21 years — in the Outstanding Talk Series category.

And yes, when it comes to Colbert, something major has happened. Depending on which version of events you believe, either CBS chose to cancel The Late Show With Stephen Colbert due to its unprofitability (despite it being the No. 1 show in its time slot, The Late Show was reportedly losing $40 million a year), or CBS’s parent company, Paramount, bowed to pressure from the Trump administration to sack a longtime critic of the president in order to grease the wheels on Paramount’s merger with Skydance (which the FCC approved to go through just last night). The grim economic forecast for late-night TV doesn’t do much to disprove the former notion, but the timing of the cancellation — mere weeks after Paramount Global had settled a defamation lawsuit by the Trump administration for $16 million and one week after Colbert called the settlement figure a “big, fat bribe” — has done more than just raise eyebrows around Hollywood. Trump’s gloating response to Colbert’s firing was enough to convince many in the industry that CBS’s business decision was politically motivated.

“This is a loss leader for CBS, but it’s also a jewel in their crown,” says Caissie St. Onge, who’d worked at The Late Show in the Letterman days and is currently a producer for Busy Philipps’s talk show Busy This Week. “It’s part of what makes CBS Paramount special, right? It’s worth the investment to have this.”

“If they were concerned with preserving brand integrity, they would want to keep their flagship late-night show,” says former Late Show writer Django Gold. “Having The Late Show on their roster offers a lot of intangible benefits that they’re throwing away. They won’t get these benefits with whatever low-budget clip show they put up in its place, even if it looks better on the balance sheet.”

Trump’s Truth Social post had the air of a victory dance, lending credence to the idea that the cancellation was, if not a Trump directive, then at least a decision made by executives looking to get on the president’s good side. Either way, that’s troubling for anyone who earns their living making TV. “It feels different to me than the first Trump administration,” one former late-night writer (and current Emmy voter) says of the industry’s crackdown on DEI policies and anti-Trump commentary. “It feels like a real mask-off moment for billionaires who are going, ‘Yeah, actually, these conditions are fine and good with us because they allow U.S. tax breaks and corporate consolidation.’”

In the days since he announced the cancellation, Colbert has become a legitimate cause célèbre. The pro-Colbert contingent includes Trump haters, folks opposed to giant media conglomerates, free-speech advocates, the Writers Guild, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Colbert’s Late Show predecessor David Letterman, and anybody who’s worried about the long-term (or even short-term) future of late-night comedy. Most notably, Colbert’s friends and colleagues in the industry have come out in full force. Jon Stewart, John Oliver, Adam Sandler, Lin-Manuel Miranda, “Weird Al” Yankovic, and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog were among the famous faces showing their support on Colbert’s stage and in his audience this week. At lunch with Paul Giamatti on Monday, Colbert was besieged by supporters. He has become the face of a Hollywood that has been and continues to be targeted by Trump (just this week, the administration spouted off about The Daily Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, The View, and South Park).

When it comes to Emmy voting, of course it doesn’t really matter how much of CBS’s decision was a belt-tightening move before a corporate merger or a craven attempt to get the president (and his FCC) to sign off on the Skydance merger. If it walks like a Trump-approved sacking that will take away the jobs of hundreds of TV professionals and quacks like a Trump-approved sacking that will take away the jobs of hundreds of TV professionals, then quack-quack. Emmy voters, you have an important decision to make when you’re filling out those Emmy ballots.

But giving Colbert the Emmy would be a decision that flies in the face of one of the Emmys’ most powerful headwinds. The Daily Show is the recurring favorite of Outstanding Talk Series (and its predecessor, Outstanding Variety Series), with a ten-year winning streak from 2003 to 2012 and wins the last two years. The only late-night show more popular is HBO’s Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, which won the Variety Series Emmy for seven consecutive years (2016–2022) before being moved to the Variety Sketch Series category. (For Colbert’s part, The Colbert Report won in 2013 and 2014.) During that span, there were numerous occasions where it seemed like sentimental favorites might spoil the run of The Daily Show and its descendants. When Conan O’Brien got fired from The Tonight Show in 2010, receiving a surge of support from the (non-Leno) late-night community … The Daily Show won the Emmy. When Conan returned the next year with his new TBS show, eager to shove his success in NBC’s face … The Daily Show won the Emmy. When David Letterman’s final season of The Late Show was nominated in 2015 … The Daily Show won the Emmy. When Conan was nominated one last time after retiring in 2021 … Last Week Tonight won the Emmy. A traditional, non-news late-night talk show hasn’t won the award in 23 years.

This is why I don’t say things like “shoo-in” when it comes to beating The Daily Show. We’re still more than three weeks away from winner voting opening on August 18. The news cycle moves fast these days, and who knows what crisis could befall us by then. The Late Show might not even be the only late-night program to get the ax this summer.

On the other hand: Colbert is a hugely liked figure in the industry. Everybody I spoke to for this story described him as a good guy. The incumbent, Jon Stewart himself, repeatedly going to bat for his old Comedy Central colleague feels almost like an endorsement. Hell, a groundswell of support for Colbert might even herald good news for Hacks. After it got bodied by The Studio in the nomination count, all the Emmy momentum is with the freshman Apple TV+ series. But after a week’s worth of social media surfacing and resurfacing that clip of Deborah Vance quitting her late-night show rather than compromise her principles, I’m starting to think Hacks might once again find itself collecting the Best Comedy statue on Emmys night.

 It’ll probably take more than The Late Show’s cancellation to get him a statue come September.