Behind the dual cultural touchstones of VH1’s RuPaul’s Drag Race and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Viacom tallied four wins at the Creative Arts Emmys earlier this week. Here’s a video round-up of the victors:
Viacom 2017 Creative Arts Emmy Wins from Viacom on Vimeo.
This is RuPaul’s second consecutive year taking the Outstanding Host of a Variety, Nonfiction or Reality Program honor – an outcome that was widely predicted after the show’s move from Viacom’s Logo to VH1 earlier this year.
“Drag Race was already the best reality show on TV, and you’d have been hard-pressed to tell anyone within its community of loyal fans that its reach was niche, but the show’s move from the Logo network to Viacom neighbor VH1 proved that the ceiling on television’s premiere drag competition was even higher,” wrote Decider’s Joe Reid in July. “The show scored record ratings and was a massive hit on social media.”
Take one look at the host commanding the stage, and it’s clear why RuPaul repeated this top honor:
With the added exposure, the program racked up seven Emmy nominations this season, and one category remains undecided: RuPaul’s Drag Race is also nominated in the Best Reality Competition Series category, the winner of which will be announced at the primetime Emmys ceremony this Sunday, Sept. 17.
The Daily Show’s Emmy, for Outstanding Short Form Variety Series, celebrates Noah’s “Between the Scenes” takes, in which he riffs on prominent news stories. Here, the host breaks down the U.S. government’s bizarre tradition of perpetually threatening shutdowns over its own failure to raise the debt ceiling:
The Emmy win came on the same week that Comedy Central extended Noah’s contract through 2022. The move acknowledged the show’s incredible and consistent ratings and social engagement growth as the host nears his two-year anniversary at the helm. Vitally, The Daily Show is positioned to wrap this quarter as the most-watched daily, late-night show among millennials.
This is not Noah’s first trip to an awards podium – this past spring, he took Best Host at MTV’s reconfigured Movie and TV Awards.