HBO had a massive night at the Emmys in downtown Los Angeles September 12, with the Mike White social satire The White Lotus winning five trophies. Apple TV Plus comedy Ted Lasso claimed four, and HBO’s Succession took three. ABC comedy Abbott Elementary and Netflix drama Squid Game picked up two Emmys apiece. 

Among other HBO winners, Zendaya got best actress in a drama for Euphoria, Matthew Macfadyen got top supporting actor for Succession, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver picked up best variety talk series and outstanding writing for a variety series, Jesse Armstrong won for writing for a drama with Succession, and Jerrod Carmichael won for outstanding writing in a variety special for Rothaniel. 

HBO Max pitched in another win, as Jean Smart was honored for best actress in a comedy on Hacks. 

NBC aired the Emmys. Kenan Thompson hosted from the Microsoft Theater. Last year's event, hosted by Cedric the Entertainer on CBS, took place inside a tent near the theater, with a few hundred stars in attendance. 

The White Lotus won the prestigious best limited series, along with Jennifer Coolidge winning supporting actress in a limited series, Murray Bartlett getting supporting actor in a limited series, White winning for writing in a limited series and again for directing. 

The White Lotus, an upstairs-downstairs drama about the self-absorbed wealthy people at a Hawaiian resort and the staffers who serve them, beat Hulu’s Dopesick, The Dropout and Pam & Tommy, and Netflix’s Inventing Anna for best limited series. 

Succession got top drama, beating out AMC’s Better Call Saul, HBO’s Euphoria, Netflix’s Ozark, Stranger Things and Squid Game, Apple TV’s Severance and Showtime’s Yellowjackets. 

Ted Lasso won top comedy, besting ABC’s Abbott Elementary, HBO’s Barry, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Hacks (HBO Max), Prime Video’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building and FX’s What We Do in the Shadows.

The political zingers often offered up by winners in their speeches were largely absent, with presenter Bowen Yang standing out for a mild poke at President Trump and the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.  

Done+Dusted and Hudlin Entertainment produced the telecast, which featured 25 categories, plus the Governors Award. Presenters included Amy Poehler, Angela Bassett, Anthony Anderson, Christopher Meloni, Jean Smart and Jeremy Allen White. 

Last year, Netflix's The Queen's Gambit got top limited series, Ted Lasso won top comedy and Netflix's The Crown earned top drama. 

Succession creator Jesse Armstrong thanked HBO as he accepted the best drama prize, crediting the network for its efforts to “protect and support us.”

During one of his various trips to the podium, White Lotus creator White spoke about his time on season 37 of Survivor. He said the way to stay in the Survivor game was to lower your threat level. “Now I feel like I raised my threat level,” he said. “I want to stay in the game…don’t vote me off the island please!” 

Season two of The White Lotus, set in Italy, starts in October. ■

Fight for the Future, a group pushing new regulations on Big Tech, is taking the fight to the home(s) of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Over the weekend, the group parked billboard trucks outside Schumer’s homes in Washington, D.C., and Brooklyn, New York, looping a segment from HBO's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on regulating Big Tech.

Oliver was famous for pushing the Federal Communications Commission to impose network-neutrality regs on internet service providers, but like many Washington legislators on both sides of the aisle, he has turned his attention to the power of edge providers.

Also: Sponsors Urge Action on Bipartisan Big Tech Competition Bill

The video billboard also directs passersby to Fight for the Future’s website, the aptly named MakeSchumerWatchJohnOliver.com, which will allow them to tweet the segment directly to the senator as well.

Fight for the Future is looking to fight fire with fire, as it were, given that Big Tech backers have blanketed media in Washington with ads arguing the bills represent a parade of horrible from allowing dangerous malware, to essentially breaking Amazon Prime's free two-day delivery.

The bills they want Schumer to advance to a floor vote are S. 2992 and S. 2710.

S. 2992, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, is billed as preventing online favoritism.

Specifically, it would:

• 1. “Prohibit dominant platforms from abusing their gatekeeper power by favoring their own products or services, disadvantaging rivals, or discriminating among businesses that use their platforms in a manner that would materially harm competition on the platform; and 
• a. “Prohibit specific forms of conduct that are harmful to small businesses, entrepreneurs, and consumers, but that do not have any pro-competitive benefit, including: 
• i. “Preventing another business’s product or service from interoperating with the dominant platform or another business; 
• ii. “Requiring a business to buy a dominant platform’s goods or services for preferred placement on its platform; 
• iii. “Misusing a business’s data to compete against them; and 
• iv. “Biasing search results in favor of the dominant firm."

Reading like an app net neutrality rule for Apple and Google, S. 2710, the Open Apps Market Act, would prevent a covered company from restricting the use of alternative in-app payment systems; or from favoring their own terms of distribution, pricing or conditions of sale; or penalize developers for using different pricing terms or conditions via another in-app payment system.

It prevents a Google or Apple, for example, from using info derived from a third-party app to compete with that same app.

The bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee with overwhelming bipartisan support (21-1) back in February and was backed by the odd couple pairing of liberal Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and conservative Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn.

“We know as soon as Schumer watches the John Oliver segment he’ll understand why S. 2992 and S. 2710 are so important, stop stalling, and move them to the floor for a vote,” said Fight for the Future.

Democratic legislators are also pushing Schumer to hold the votes.

In a press conference earlier this month, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and other  2992 sponsors and supporters said they need to get a vote ASAP, before the August recess. She pointed out that the leaders of both the House and Senate [that would be Schumer] need have promised a vote and need to schedule it. Sen. Klobuchar pointed out that it has been over a year and there has been no vote on the bill. She also said that Big Tech has spent some $70 million on ads in the past year and employed thousands of lobbyists. ■

AT&T defended its carriage of controversial far right news channel One America News Network, claiming it allows its networks editorial independence. 

That goes both ways.

John Oliver, host of HBO's Last Week Tonight, sharply criticized his network's corporate parent, which is in the process of spinning off the media company that controls HBO, WarnerMedia, into a unit it will 70% own. 

Before declaring AT&T a horrible company for its support of OAN, Oliver took jabs at the telecom's new corporate slogan: "More for your thing. That's our thing." 

"That sounds like Yoda pitching a penis enlargement device," Oliver quipped. 

You can view the 4:27-minute clip below.

HBO's Mare of Easttown and Netflix’s The Crown lead the count of Primetime Emmy Awards wins thus far through the first half of CBS' live televised presentation.

The Crown swept the supporting actor in a drama series categories with wins for Tobias Menzies and Gillian Anderson, as well as awards for best directing and best writing for a drama series.  

Mare of Easttown took home two awards for best supporting drama actor in a limited or anthology series (Evan Peters) and best supporting actress (Julianne Nicholson.)  Apple TV Plus's Ted Lasso won Emmys in both the supporting actor and actress in a comedy series for Brett Goldstein and Hannah Waddingham, respectively. 

HBO Max’s Hacks also won two awards for best directing and writing for a comedy series, while NBC’s Saturday Night Live won for best variety sketch series.

Emmys 2021: Photos From the 73rd Annual Emmy Awards

HBO’s Last Week Tonight With John Oliver won its sixth consecutive Emmy in the Outstanding Variety Talk Series, and also won for best writing for a variety series.  

Emmys host Cedric The Entertainer set the tone for the show with an opening monologue that offered a personal tribute to the history of television before launching into a TV-based version of late hip-hop artist Biz Markie’s hit song Just A Friend, performed by celebrities L.L. Cool J, Rita Wilson and Lil Dicky among others.  

The main headline coming out of the Television Academy’s Emmys nomination announcement Tuesday is the dominance of the streaming services. With shows from streaming services representing eight of the top 10 most nominated shows, it’s clear that the online platform resonated with viewers, critics and Emmy voters.

With that said, there were a few highlights that traditional television distributors can hang their hats on heading into the Sept. 19 Emmy Awards show telecast. Here are several takeaways for cable and broadcast networks from Tuesday’s 73rd Emmys nominations announcement.

Read Also: Streaming Shows 'The Crown,' 'The Mandalorian,' 'WandaVision' Lead Emmy Awards Nominations 

• Along with 18 nominations, HBO’s recently cancelled Lovecraft Country became the first series ever to have Black actors nominated in both the drama best actor (Jonathan Rogers) and best actress (Jurnee Smollet) categories. The horror-themed show also has the distinction of having Black actors nominated in six of the seven drama acting categories. Overall, actors of color drew four of the six nominations in the best actor in a drama series category and half of the nominations for the best actress in a drama series award. 

Read Also: 'Lovecraft Country' Creator Outlines New Season Plot Despite Series Cancellation

• NBC’s Saturday Night Live continues to rack up Emmy nominations. The late-night series drew 21 nominations — one off its record 22 nods for a variety show garnered in 2017— and now has a record 306th Emmy nominations overall. It was one of the few bright spots for the broadcast networks, which found itself either shut out or with only one nomination in the outstanding drama, comedy and limited series categories. NBC led all broadcast networks with 46 nominations.

• HBO’s A Black Lady Sketch Show is the only show that stands in the way of Saturday Night Live winning its fifth straight Emmy in the Outstanding Variety Sketch Series category as only two shows qualified for the award.  

• FX was the most nominated basic cable network with 16, nine of which were generated by Pose, including a lead actress in a drama nomination for MJ Rodriguez — the first ever in the category for a lead trans person. VH1 (11) and National Geographic (10) also generated double-digit nominations. Overall 16 cable networks garnered Emmy nominations, matching the number of online services with Emmy nods. 

• HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver will look to make it six Emmy wins in a row in the Outstanding Talk Series category, while VH1’s RuPaul’s Drag Race will go for four straight wins in the Outstanding Competition Program category.  

Season eight of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver starts on HBO Sunday, Feb. 14. HBO calls the show “a satirical, insightful and meticulously researched look at current events in the U.S. and around the globe,” with host Oliver offering “hilarious, much-needed perspective on today’s pressing political, social and cultural issues.”

HBO cited the pandemic and the Biden administration as two topics Last Week Tonight will examine in the new season. 

The show has received 20 Emmys since it premiered in 2014. Season seven picked up four, including outstanding variety talk series. 

Last Week Tonight is produced for HBO by Avalon and Sixteen String Jack Productions. The executive producers are John Oliver, Tim Carvell, Liz Stanton, Jon Thoday and James Taylor. Paul Pennolino and Christopher Werner direct.

HBO has renewed Last Week Tonight With John Oliver for three more seasons, keeping the series on through 2023. The show, on hiatus until Sept. 27, is in season seven. 

HBO described Last Week Tonight as “presenting a satirical look at the week in news, politics and current events, as well as shining a light on issues big and small as the U.S. heads toward a pivotal 2020 presidential election.”

“For the past seven years, John and his incredibly talented team have taken on topics that are both in the public mind and off the beaten path, always managing to shed new light on these subjects with intelligence and searing humor,” said Casey Bloys, chief content officer at HBO and HBO Max. “We are beyond thrilled to continue this relationship for three more years.”

Last Week Tonight tapes in New York. 

“We’re all extremely happy to be able to continue to do our show on HBO for another three years, or until the end of the world, whichever comes first,” said Oliver.

Last Week Tonight is produced by Avalon and Sixteen String Jack Productions. Executive producers are John Oliver, Tim Carvell, Liz Stanton, Jon Thoday and James Taylor. Paul Pennolino is the director.

HBO’s Game of Thrones season eight premiere drew a record 17.4 million viewers in its Sunday debut, according to network officials.

The combined linear, HBO Go and HBO Now audience for the first of the series’ final six episodes beat out the 16.9 million viewers watched by the show's season seven finale to become the most watched episode in the show’s history, according to HBO.

The HBO Now streaming service also saw a jump of approximately 50% in viewing when compared to last season’s finale and nearly doubled (97%) when compared to the seventh season premiere, according to the network. Overall the streaming service reported its largest night of streaming activity ever, said HBO.

RELATED: 'GoT' and Masters Viewers Faced Usual Live Stream Challenges Sunday 

Other HBO shows benefited from the record Thrones ratings debut. The second season premiere of dramedy Barry at 10 pm drew 1.8 million viewers and 2.2 million viewers for the night — more than quadrupling its previous week's audience that did not benefit from the Game of Thrones lead-in. Sunday's episode of Veep at 10:30 drew 1 million viewers and 1.5 million viewers including repeats, its largest audience since June 2016, according to network officials.

Also, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver was watched by 1.7 million viewers for the night and 1.3 million viewers at 11:00 p.m., its most-watched telecast since August 2017, according to the network. 

The alleged cyberattack that briefly overwhelmed the FCC's Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) in early May 2017 was actually a deluge of public comments, spurred by HBO's John Oliver's call for viewers to send pro-net neutrality comments to the agency. The FCC's Office of Inspector General is completing an independent investigation of the incident, concluding that the agency's former chief information officer incorrectly told the commissioners on May 8 last year that the outage was caused by a high-volume attack by a small group of antagonists who tried to tie up the FCC server.  

Related: FCC Hit By DDoS Attacks (May 8, 2017)

FCC chairman Ajit Pai, announcing the findings on Monday, explained that "the Inspector General’s office asked my office not to discuss this investigation while it was ongoing so as not to jeopardize it."

Pai also turned the incident into a political moment, noting that the "FCC’s former chief information officer, who was hired by the prior administration and is no longer with the commission, provided inaccurate information about this incident to me, my office, Congress, and the American people."

"This is completely unacceptable," Pai added, emphasizing that he was "disappointed that some working under the former CIO apparently either disagreed with the information that he was presenting or had questions about it, yet didn’t feel comfortable communicating their concerns to me or my office."

During his May 7 Last Week Tonight show in which he discussed net neutrality, Oliver urged viewers to express their views on the topic to www.gofccyourself.com, which linked directly to the FCC's electronic comments site. More than a million comments poured in, causing the FCC's site to crash briefly, prompting claims that a handful of hackers had created a distributed denial of service (DDoS) barrier.

Related: John Oliver Takes on FCC's Pai, Net Neutrality (May 8, 2017)

"This report debunks the conspiracy theory that my office or I had any knowledge that the information provided by the former CIO was inaccurate and was allowing that inaccurate information to be disseminated for political purposes," Pai said.

Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel immediately augmented Pai's statement, saying “The Inspector General Report tells us what we knew all along: the FCC’s claim that it was the victim of a DDoS ... is bogus."

"What happened instead is obvious—millions of Americans overwhelmed our online system because they wanted to tell us how important internet openness is to them and how distressed they were to see the FCC roll back their rights," Rosenworcel said. "It’s unfortunate that this agency’s energy and resources needed to be spent debunking this implausible claim.”

In his statement, Pai criticized "a culture... we inherited from the prior Administration... in which many members of the Commission’s career IT staff were hesitant to express disagreement with the commission’s former CIO in front of FCC management."

Pai cited the still-unreleased report as documenting that on May 8, 2017, the former CIO "informed my office that ‘some external folks attempted to send high traffic in an attempt to tie-up the server from responding to others, which unfortunately makes it appear unavailable to everyone attempting to get through the queue.’ In response, the Commission’s Chief of Staff, who works in my office, asked if the then-CIO was confident that the incident wasn’t caused by a number of individuals ‘attempting to comment at the same time ... but rather some external folks deliberately trying to tie-up the server.’ In response to this direct inquiry, the former CIO told my office: ‘Yes, we’re 99.9% confident this was external folks deliberately trying to tie-up the server to prevent others from commenting and/or create a spectacle.' "

Pai also pointed to "a flawed comment system." He vowed that the "most important question is what can be done to prevent this from happening again" and cited the report's spotlighting the need for the FCC to revamp its comment filing system.

"It has become abundantly clear that ECFS needs to be updated," he said, noting that last week Congress approved a reprogramming request that allots funding to redesign ECFS. 

Public-interest group Free Press piled on Pai after the IG report and the commissioners' responses. Free Press deputy director and senior counsel Jessica J. González said in part in a statement: “Today’s IG report exposes the Pai FCC’s general willingness to ignore logic and contradictory evidence when doing so supports his preconceived notions and political agenda. In this case, the former chief information officer’s story was obviously flawed, but Pai and his office didn’t hesitate to pass along that story and dismiss its critics. In his response to the inspector general’s report, Pai throws former CIO David Bray under the bus and tries to blame the prior administration for hiring him. But Bray worked for Pai at the time of these incidents, and later statements describing the supposedly 'voluminous documentation' for this attack came from Pai’s hand-picked spokesman. 

"Pai has a long history of misleading the public on Net Neutrality, including claiming that there was strong public support for his 2017 decision to repeal the rules, which couldn’t be further from the truth. This makes it particularly difficult to take anything he or his staff says about the Net Neutrality docket, or frankly anything at all, at face value," González said.

HBO's Last Week Tonight With John Oliver was a repeat Emmy Award winner in the Outstanding Variety Talk Series category.

Read More: Complete coverage of the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards

Last Week Tonight With John Oliver outlasted competition from Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (TBS), Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC), Real Time With Bill Maher (HBO), The Late Show With Stephen Colbert (CBS) and The Late Late Show with James Corden (CBS) to take home the coveted statuette.

The series also won the Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series, besting Full Frontal With Samantha Bee, Late Night With Seth Meyers (NBC), The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and Saturday Night Live (NBC), which won the Emmy for Outstanding Variety Sketch Series.

Even before it launches its HBO nightly newscast and a documentary service on the former A&E H2 channel, Vice is laying out plans for expanding its TV and online video presence globally, and anticipates a public offering or sale in the coming year, founder/CEO Shane Smith said.

During a CNBC interview in London, Smith disclosed that Vice plans to launch at least a dozen TV networks throughout Europe during the coming year, continuing to concentrate on edgy programs for millennial audiences. He acknowledged that he move into TV is essential since 75% of the company's ad revenue comes from TV. Smith said he expects to use that money for expanded ventures into mobile and over-the-top delivery.

"You can actually take money from TV and put it into mobile, which is quite frankly more difficult to monetize," Smith said.

He offered no specific details about the upcoming U.S. launches, but said he expects revenue will near $1 billion this year and will double during the next few years. 

Vice is in acquisition talks "with everybody," at a $5 billion valuation, but that is "kind of at the top end where media could buy us today," Smith said. Hence he also is pondering a public offering.

"Around the end of this year, we're going to have to make a decision about whether we start to make the book to go public, or do a sort of larger, major strategic deal," Smith told CNBC.

During the London trip last week, Smith also revealed that Vice has produced 32 TV series  since early 2014 "for our network in America" and added that the content has been offered for pan-European regional and national deals.

"We are trying to navigate the morass of how you do telco deals simultaneous with terrestrial TV deals and keep growing our online platforms," Smith said, according to published reports. He has said he expects to announce distribution partners within the next couple months and begin TV rollout during the first quarter of 2016.

Separately, Vice has hired former Bloomberg chief content officer Josh Tyrangiel to run the company's new daily newscast for HBO; the launch date for the new five-nights-per week show has not been set. Tyrangiel had been at Bloomberg for six years.

Smith described Vice's HBO show as a venture that will "take news programming in a totally new direction. ... [It] needs the leadership of an expert who’s hungry to do things differently."  

Meanwhile, Netflix, which has accelerated its original content production, said it will add the edgy kind of documentaries that have been Vice's forte. During Netflix's recent earnings call, content chief Ted Sarandos said the streaming service could compete with Vice documentaries and with news-based shows such as HBO's Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.

"We're definitely being more adventurous in terms of the genres we're going into," Sarandos said during a presentation, during which Netflix CEO Reed Hastings asked, "What's the likelihood that we compete directly with Vice in the next two years?"

Sarandos simply said, "Probably high."