This Emmy stat is a good sign that ‘A Black Lady Sketch Show’ will win Best Variety Sketch Series

“Saturday Night Live” has won the Emmy for Best Variety Sketch Series for the last five years in a row, so it’s naturally the front-runner to win for the sixth time this year, right? That was the logic after nominations were announced, but the tide may have turned at the Creative Arts Emmys over the weekend. Emmy rival “A Black Lady Sketch Show” won a category that has been a canary in the coalmine for “SNL” in the past, which could signal a “Black Lady” upset.

“Black Lady Sketch Show” won Best Variety Series Directing on Saturday night when the Creative Arts Awards handed out most of this year’s variety prizes. That category doesn’t always foretell who will win Best Variety Sketch Series, but in the past it has foretold who will lose it. This was only the third time in 13 years that “SNL” has lost that award. The last two times that happened, it also lost Best Variety Sketch Series.

In 2015 the directing prize went to “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” (a rare directing win for a talk show), and Best Variety Sketch Series ended up going to “Inside Amy Schumer.” The following year “Schumer” won the directing award; it didn’t win Best Variety Sketch Series that time, but neither did “SNL.” Instead the winner was “Key and Peele.” Then “SNL” doubled up for the next five years in a row, winning directing and series prizes hand-in-hand.

Now “SNL” has lost the directing award again. The only other nominee for Best Variety Sketch Series at the Emmys is “Black Lady Sketch Show,” so if TV academy members really are looking for an alternative to “SNL” in the top category, that’s the only place they have to go. And “SNL” has shown other signs of vulnerability. While it routinely dominated the nominations in recent years– last year it got 21 — this time it only got nine. And this was the first time since 2006 that the venerated sketch comedy didn’t win a single award at Creative Arts.

What do you think? Are the Emmys really going to take a break from “SNL” this year, or am I overthinking it?

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