Will 24 be the last network show to win the Emmys’ top prize?

Twenty years on, showrunner Howard Gordon remembers the night the real-time thriller made a curious type of history.

By Matt Webb Mitovich | August 26, 2026 | 2:00pm

Photo: Vince Bucci/Getty Images

TV Features Emmys 2026

Will 24 be the last network show to win the Emmys’ top prize?

On August 27, 2006, at the 58th Primetime Emmy Awards, Fox’s 24 was named Outstanding Drama Series. It was a milestone, first-time win for the Kiefer Sutherland-led thriller; each of its four previous seasons had been nominated in the category, to no avail. With local affiliates itching to throw to the evening news—and the clock ticking on host Conan O’Brien’s “TV legend Bob Newhart will suffocate if the show goes over three hours” bit—the acceptance speech was, as co-creator Joel Surnow promised, quick. Executive producer Howard Gordon, coming off his first year as showrunner, wrapped up the remarks with an earnest expression of thanks to 24’s cast, crew, and viewers. “We all love doing the show and we’re grateful to everybody who watches the show for giving us that chance.”

But the ceremony also proved to be an altogether different kind of milestone: In the 20 years since, no other network show has won what is arguably the Emmys’ top prize. Not once. In 20 years. And the trend shows no sign of ending anytime soon.

To claim the award in 2006, 24 had to best NBC’s The West Wing (the Television Academy’s pick for Outstanding Drama Series from 2000 to 2003), HBO’s The Sopranos (the 2004 winner), ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy, and Fox’s House. Two decades on, Gordon tells The A.V. Club that heading into that ceremony, there was no expectation to finally emerge victorious, though “that’s more a function of protecting yourself.”

“We were super proud of the season, so we felt on the one hand, we had as good a chance as we ever did,” he says. “On the other hand, it was the fifth year of a show that quite possibly had seen its best days, or for which the novelty had worn off.”

24‘s triumphant “Day 5” opens with Sutherland’s Jack Bauer—whose death had been faked in the previous finale—toiling at a Mojave, CA oil refinery under an alias. A series of tragic events brings the former Counter Terrorist Unit boss out of his 18 months of hiding, and pulls him into the hunt for a deadly nerve gas stolen by Russian terrorists. It was the second straight 24 season to air all two dozen weekly episodes in a row, uninterrupted—an ambitious yet fitting scheduling gambit for the real-time thriller. It also quickly established itself as 24‘s most-watched season ever, opening with north of 17 million viewers and proceeding to average 14 million weekly.

Gordon and company might not have expected that season five would snap 24‘s losing streak in the best drama race, but from an Emmy observer’s perspective, it came as little surprise. The well-reviewed season also netted nods for lead actor Sutherland, supporting players Gregory Itzin and Jean Smart, and director Jon Cassar.

According to Gordon, the season’s “secret weapon” was that one-two punch of Itzin—reprising his “unique and Nixonian take” on slithery President Charles Logan—and Smart, whose First Lady Martha Logan purposely evoked Martha Mitchell, the famously outspoken wife of Nixon’s Attorney General, John M. Mitchell.

“The casting gods were smiling on us,” Gordon says. “Their chemistry together was extraordinary.”

It was also a noisy, attention-grabbing season that killed off multiple fan favorites within the first 15 minutes, starting with former president David Palmer, played by original cast member Dennis Haysbert.

“I remember feeling very vividly, every single year, like there’s no way we could do this again,” Gordon says. “Between seasons four and five, I felt it the most, that we had to take a really big swing, and there’s no bigger swing than the assassination of David Palmer as a starting point—just because of our fondness for the character.”

Couple that with a tragic death among the series’ core CTU operatives—Jack, Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub), Tony (Carlos Bernard), and Michelle (Reiko Aylesworth)— and you had what Gordon calls a “big reset.”

In addition to 24 finally laying claim to Outstanding Drama, Sutherland and Cassar both won their first Emmys that evening. Gordon says “a big party” followed, with the celebratory 24 team descending upon Spago at one point, and staying out “for a good part of the night.”

But was that celebration the last of its kind? Is part of 24‘s legacy to be the final network show ever awarded the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series? The clock does seem to be running out on Fox and its broadcast rivals. To wit:

To find an Outstanding Drama Series race in which a majority of nominees aired on network TV, you’d have to go back 19 years, to when Grey’s, House, ABC’s Boston Legal, and NBC’s Heroes got whacked by The Sopranos.
It has been 16 years since broadcast TV fielded multiple nominees in the category; in 2010, ABC’s Lost and CBS’ The Good Wife were pitted against four cable dramas, ultimately losing to AMC’s Mad Men.
A network drama hasn’t even mustered a nomination in the category since 2021, when NBC’s This Is Us went up against five streaming shows plus two cable contenders; Netflix’s The Crown wound up reigning.
Of the 40 shows nominated for Outstanding Drama over the past five years, 60% hail from streaming, with cable claiming dibs on the rest. This year, streaming accounts for 75% of nominees.

“I would not have predicted that there wouldn’t be another network show [to win since 24],” Gordon says, but the “bigger budgets,” “commercial free-ness,” and oft-edgier content of cable and streaming fare put broadcasters at a disadvantage, he suggests. Meanwhile, the more voluminous output demanded of a network drama can prove to be a relentless “high-wire act.”

“It was like speeding down the highway and you’re laying down the asphalt as you go,” he says. “It forever had that feeling.”

As for whether a network drama might ever again make the Emmys’ short list, Gordon says with a shrug, “I don’t know.” In addition to the handicaps mentioned above, he cites a certain “stigma” (for lack of a better word) now associated with broadcast offerings.

Gordon goes on to clock that The Pitt—HBO Max’s acclaimed, real-time medical drama—not only looks and feels like a network TV show, “it in many ways resembles 24 in its pedal-to-the-metal-ness, its fearlessness and relentlessness.” As such, if The Pitt or a network-style, high-caliber show akin to it were to call, say, NBC home, “that’s a case” where the decades-long Outstanding Drama streak might be broken.

But in the TV landscape as it currently exists? The one where even Gordon has moved on to streaming? The showrunner and Emmy-nominated EP for Netflix’s The Beast In Me can only marvel. “We’re living in interesting times!”

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