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The industry is racked with uncertainty over how the Emmys will unfold. But even though we may not know when the next award ceremony will take place, we already have a sense of how well the nominated shows are resonating with audiences.
To compare the shows’ share of audience attention with how the general public has rated them, we looked at demand for each nominee’s most recent season against the show’s IMDb rating. While this doesn’t necessarily predict how the Academy will vote, it shows how these series are performing with audiences more broadly.
One show leads in both the amount of demand for its last season as well as its IMDb score: AMC’s “Better Call Saul.” In the first 30 days following the premiere of the second part of its final season last July, the show had 60 times the average series demand as audiences showed up so see how the “Breaking Bad” spinoff would end. And it had a rating of 9 on IMDb, higher score than any of the other series exained here.
This might only serve to underscore how cheated by the Emmys process fans of “Better Call Saul” likely feel at this point. The show has racked up 46 nominations in previous years but has yet to win a single Emmy. Those hoping that this is the year for “Better Call Saul,” the show’s last chance, should know that it faces stiff competition in the Best Drama category.
Like “Better Call Saul,” HBO’s “Succession” is going into this awards season fresh off its series finale. While it hasn’t attracted the same audience demand or as high of a rating on IMDb, it remains an industry favorite and already has 13 Emmys to its name. Another factor that may be working in favor of “Succession” is that the show’s audience demographics skew older than other nominees. If the pattern we measured with this year’s Oscars applies to the Emmys, shows that appeal to older audiences may have a leg up when it comes to voting.
Another HBO show in the running that has won critical acclaim, but maybe not the hearts of wider audiences, is “The White Lotus.” Together with “Succession,” it dominated the Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series category. However, “The White Lotus” was the only nominee for Best Drama that fell short of 30 times the average series demand in its first 30 days. It also had the second-lowest IMDb rating in this category, just ahead of “Yellowjackets.”
Unlike with Best Drama, there isn’t a clear leader in the Best Comedy category. Two of the nominees had significantly higher demand than the rest, though: AppleTV+’s “Ted Lasso” and Netflix’s “Wednesday.” “Ted Lasso” has been consistently popular, but “Wednesday” proved to be a breakout hit last year, taking audiences by surprise and ultimately having the most in-demand season premiere of any of the Best Comedy nominees. Audiences still rate “Ted Lasso” higher on IMDb where it holds an 8.8 and the show has a track record of cleaning up at The Emmys. Whoever wins this category, the face-off between a perpetually cheerful coach and a macabre teenager makes for a humorous juxtaposition.
Christofer Hamilton is a senior insights analyst at Parrot Analytics, a WrapPRO partner. For more from Parrot Analytics, visit the Data and Analysis Hub.
