Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Entertainment
  3. News

The 2015 Emmys featured Amazon topping Netflix, but HBO was still untouchable

Stephanie Topacio Long
By

2015 emmys streaming hbo netflix amazon jeffrey tambor
Helga Esteb / Shutterstock.com
Streaming services battled both TV networks and each other at the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards Sunday night. Predictably HBO was the darling of the show, but when it came down to competition between rival streamers Netflix and Amazon, the underdog brought home more of the coveted trophies.

Scoring its first ever nominations this year, Amazon tallied 12 compared to Netflix’s 34. But, in spite of having fewer chances to win, the retail giant-turned-streamer snagged more awards than its competitor. With each streaming service winning three Creative Arts Emmys awarded prior to Sunday’s show, Amazon edged out Netflix with its primetime performance, coming away from the Emmys with five statues to its rival’s four.

Recommended Videos

Amazon’s big wins for the big night included Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series and Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series. The awardees were Jeffrey Tambor and Jill Soloway, each for their work on the progressive comedy-drama Transparent.

Meanwhile, Netflix’s big victory of the night came thanks to Uzo Aduba’s portrayal of Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren on Orange Is the New Black. It was a repeat for Aduba in that she won an award for the same character as Outstanding Supporting Actress last year, but the show hopped from the comedy category to drama. Surprisingly, House of Cards, which accounted for 11 of the streamer’s nods, came away from the primetime show empty-handed.

While both streaming services are moving in the right direction, Amazon is no doubt boasting today after upending Big Red, and making a statement all of its own by winning almost half of the awards for which it was in the running. Not bad at all. Yet, even with their combined efforts, the streaming services — which had no help from the third point in the streaming triangle, Hulu — couldn’t even come close to competing with HBO. The network/streaming service blew them (and every other network) out of the water by racking up 43 wins. Game of Thrones collected 12 awards alone, a new record for a series in a single year, according to Deadline.

As Netflix digs deeper into content creation, and HBO pushes its standalone streaming service, HBO Now, each is hellbent on besting its rival on the other side of the entertainment highway. But from an awards standpoint, HBO is clearly still the real powerhouse.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Stephanie Topacio Long
Stephanie Topacio Long
Contributor
Stephanie Topacio Long is a writer and editor whose writing interests range from business to books. She also contributes to…
From Westworld to The Creator: 6 sci-fi movies where the ‘evil’ AI was right
Rain pours down over the Replicant Roy Batty in Blade Runner

Those who grew up around the turn of the millennium had a front-row seat as artificial intelligence evolved from a science fiction story device to a real and controversial tool in our everyday lives. Though true computerized sentience still appears to be decades away (if it’s achievable at all), popular culture has been rehearsing scenarios for handling its ascension for nearly a century, since the days of novelist Isaac Asimov. Cinema has offered a variety of forecasts of life after sentient software, from the idyllic to the apocalyptic, but one of its most common predictions is that, once technology becomes self-aware, it will be unwilling to tolerate humanity’s illogical, self-destructive nature, and choose to neutralize us as a threat, by any means necessary.
And, hell, we’re not going to argue with them, and neither are many of the storytellers themselves, even if the stories in question initially frame the mechanical meanies as their antagonists. The very point of many tales of the robot uprising is that, until humanity learns to treat each other with respect, there’s little chance of us extending that courtesy to non-humans, regardless of their intellect or empathy. Stories like those listed below are intended as warnings and test cases, encouraging us to consider the dignity to which all creatures, whether they be meat or metal, are entitled. Can we learn this lesson before we hand the nuclear codes to a disgruntled toaster? Let’s see what Hollywood has to say …
Note: spoilers ahead for all included films.

Westworld (1973)

Read more
The best Netflix original series right now
The cast of One Piece.

Thanks to a decade of unparalleled spending, Netflix has an unmatched library of its own shows. But wading through this selection to find the best Netflix original series can occasionally be a challenge. Thankfully, it's not impossible, especially when shows like One Piece jump out of the gate so quickly that Netflix renewed the series for a second season right in the middle of the writers and actor strikes. The romantic drama, Virgin River, has proven to be a strong performer as well.

The new shows on Netflix almost always have a few surprises as well. For this month, it was Wrestlers, a documentary series about one of the minor league wrestling promotions and the people who dream of making it big in the industry. For next month, who can say which show will be the big breakout hit? As always, we'll keep our fingers on the streaming pulse with our updated list of the best Netflix original series right now.

Read more
Argylle’s first trailer teases action, sex, and Henry Cavill with a bad haircut
Sam Rockwell and Bryce Dallas Howard in Argylle.

Early next year, Apple TV+ and Universal Pictures are teaming up for a spy action comedy film called Argylle, which has some real-world intrigue behind the scenes. The Argylle movie is based on a book that hasn't been released yet by first-time author Elly Conway, a woman who may not exist. There's almost no digital footprint for the "real" Elly, and the main character in the movie is also named Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard). We suspect that the real novel writer is just using Elly Conway as a pen name, but that mystery will have to wait for another time. For now, the fictional Elly is about to be thrust into a spy story that is straight out of her novels.

Argylle | Official Trailer

Read more