76th Primetime Emmy Awards: Most-Watched Titles and Stars 

When the 2024 Primetime Emmys air on ABC at 8 pm ET on September 15, the winners will have been chosen by their peers within the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. But we found ourselves wondering: How would viewers vote for this year’s nominees?

We know that TV audiences vote with their time, which is why it’s the metric we use to assess viewing trends in our monthly Gauge reports and to rank the top streaming titles each week. So, we examined the nominees in the top Emmy categories to see which titles and talent earned the most of U.S. viewers’ time.

Best Drama Series

Amazon Prime Video’s Fallout, based on the popular video game series, launched in April and proved to be a major hit for the platform. So much so that it led the pack among the Emmy nominees for Best Drama Series in terms of watch time. The final season of Netflix’s The Crown, which was a staple of the streamer’s original library for seven years, came in second.

Best Comedy Series

Hulu’s The Bear, part of its FX stable of programming, only recently launched its third season, but the second was nominated for the Best Comedy Series Emmy. In our analyses of the TV audience, the restaurant dramedy came out on top, just ahead of another Hulu property, Only Murders in the Building, as The Walt Disney Company was the big winner in the comedy category.

Best Limited or Anthology Series

This category saw a tight race between the fourth iteration of HBO’s True Detective franchise and Netflix’s dark comedy Baby Reindeer. Airing on both linear and streaming channels likely gave the former a slight edge, but also puts Reindeer’s strong performance into perspective. The fact that it is based on writer/star Richard Gadd’s real experiences did generate a lot of discussion online, and may have helped attract some more curious viewers.

Apple TV+’s Lessons in Chemistry, based on the Bonnie Garmus novel of the same name, rounded out the top three among the nominees. After being nominated for a Golden Globe earlier this year, the Emmys represent another shot at a trophy for the limited series.

Best Actor in a Drama Series

Walton Goggins has the unenviable task of playing the same man pre- and post-apocalypse in Prime Video’s Fallout, covering a 219-year span. Viewers were clearly on board for the ride, as the strength of the drama was a major driver of Goggins’ victory in the Best Actor in a Drama Series category. Other credits that helped push him to the top were his turns in HBO’s Righteous Gemstones and FX’s Justified.

Best Actress in a Drama Series

Both Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon were nominated for the Best Actress in a Drama Series for their performances in Apple TV+’s The Morning Show, and both have had extensive and successful acting careers. However, Aniston does have a major advantage in the context of this competition: a little show called Friends. While her turn in The Morning Show has earned her plenty of accolades, the evergreen nature of the NBC sitcom keeps viewers coming back, both on traditional TV and streaming. It was enough to give Ms. Aniston a dominant lead in time spent.

Notably, Imelda Staunton, whose acting career has primarily been in the U.K., turned in a strong performance in the category, fueled by her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth in the final two seasons of The Crown.

Best Actor in a Comedy Series

Jeremy Allen White, who plays the lead in Hulu’s The Bear, finished with a commanding lead for total minutes watched in the Best Actor in a Comedy Series category thanks in large part to that series. However, he was also helped by his role in 2023 feature The Iron Claw and his turn as the eldest Gallagher brother in Showtime’s Shameless, which ran for 11 seasons and is available to stream on Paramount+.

Best Actress in a Comedy Series

Last but certainly not least, we have the most competitive of the categories we analyzed: Best Actress in a Comedy Series. It was a very close race between Only Murders in the Building’s Selena Gomez and The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri. Gomez came out on top, but given she has significantly more acting credits in her resume, it makes Edebiri’s performance all the more impressive.

The nominees for the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards demonstrate the power of both new and long-running programming to attract viewers’ time and attention. By understanding how audiences are voting with their time, brands and platforms can ensure they’re reaching audiences where they are and create meaningful partnerships with the talent they are investing their time in.

Methodology

To align with Emmy rules, we focused on the eligibility period of June 1, 2023 to May 31, 2024. In the case of the Best Drama and Best Comedy categories, we measured time spent watching the season that occurred within that window, for which a given title was nominated. However, for the Best Actor and Actress nominees, we included any titles–both movies and series–in which the performer was a top-billed cast member. Provided, of course, the viewing to those titles occurred within the eligibility period. All analyses captured viewing across broadcast, cable and streaming.