Only three late-night shows will be nominated for the Outstanding Talk Series award at this year’s Primetime Emmy Awards, continuing a troubling emergent trend for showrunners in the 2020s, according to Deadline. For those unfamiliar with the Television Academy’s nomination process, the number of nominees for a given category is generally determined based on the number of submissions. Until 2022, when that number dropped below 20, special rules took effect: categories with 19 or fewer submissions received four nominations, categories with 15 or fewer submissions received three, and categories with 11 or fewer received just two slots for nomination. (On the rare occasion a category finds itself with seven or fewer submissions, each submission is screened individually via peer review to decide the number of nominees, as is the case with the Outstanding Scripted Variety Series this year).

These rules were amended when a group of executive showrunners appealed to the Television Academy in 2022 to restore the Outstanding Talk Series category’s traditional fifth nomination, in spite of the fact only 19 late-night programs were submitted for consideration that year, via Deadline. The Academy acquiesced and implemented a new procedure that now rounds the number of submissions when divided by four to the nearest whole number as the new deciding factor for nominees — for example, since 19 programs were submitted that year, the resultant figure was 4.75, which would then be rounded up to 5.

However, in the three years since the rule change was implemented, the number of submissions has nonetheless continued to decline, due to a number of factors including recent strikes and post-pandemic viewership changes, as well as former genre mainstays like Conan O’Brien (Conan O’Brien Must Go) and James Corden (The Late Late Show) leaving the scene without anyone to fill their shoes. This year, Deadline writes that only thirteen programs were submitted, for a final number of three nominations.

A member of production on an unspecified late-night show told Deadline the change was “brutal.”

Per Deadline, the prospective nominees in the race for the 2025 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Talk Series include: The Daily Show, Very Important People, Real Time with Bill Maher, Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, Midnight Snack with Julie Chan, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Hot Ones, Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney, Have I Got News For You, The Late Night With Stephen Colbert, Hart to Heart, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

The final list of Emmy nominations will release on July 15th, while the ceremony is slated to take place on September 14th.