Emmys add "Legacy Award" for shows important enough for people to still be yelling at them about

The TV Academy acknowledged that the backwards-looking award could serve as an "opportunity" to "right Emmy wrongs."

By William Hughes | January 10, 2026 | 8:44pm

Dominic West and Wendell Pierce in The Wire, Screenshot: HBO Max.

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Credit where it’s due: Television Academy CEO Maury McIntyre does seem to know which TV shows fans are still mad at the Emmys for paying inadequate due to. That’s at least one takeaway from a recent interview that McIntyre gave to The Hollywood Reporter this week, centered on the TV awards body announcing that it’s instituting a new “Legacy Award” meant to acknowledge programs making “a profound and lasting impact” on the cultural landscape. When diplomatically asked whether the award was meant to “right Emmy wrongs,” McIntyre didn’t even let the question finish before asking, “Are we trying to correct The Wire? Is that what you’re asking?”

The Academy president was joking, sure—even though, if we’re being 100 percent honest, it is still mildly infuriating that the HBO series picked up exactly two nominations, and no wins, from the Academy during its five-season run from 2002 to 2008. But he acknowledged that, while that’s not the sole reason the award’s being rolled out, there is now an “opportunity” for those kinds of historical corrections to be addressed.

It’s worth noting, meanwhile, that the Legacy Award is not a regulation Emmy, voted on directly by TV Academy members. It’ll instead be handled the same way the group’s lifetime awards-y Governors Award and Bob Hope Humanitarian Awards are handled, with a small group of governors making nominations, then submitting them for votes to the group’s board. Given that McIntyre also talks openly about being guided by concerns like “What TV show is having a big anniversary this year?” it’s pretty clear this thing will mostly be a marketing exercise, combined with an excuse to trot out older casts so that everyone can go “Aw!” (McIntyre also notes that the Emmys reserve the right to shunt the presentation off to one of the non-Primetime broadcasts any time they feel bored by it, which feels like it could evolve into a sort of snub within a snub.)

All that being said, if it can get the Gilmore Girls militants (one Emmy, for “best non-prosthetic makeup”) or the Parks And Rec partisans (zero Emmys, largely courtesy of Modern Family) to dial back on their rage, we can’t really fault the body for trying to deploy a little statuary to keep multiple decades’ worth of heat off its back.

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