Q&A: Why are Shows like ‘The Pitt’ so Popular? Ahead of the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards, W&L’s Eric Deggans and Stephanie Sandberg discuss the current state of television and why this year’s nominees have found such broad appeal in the streaming age.

Eric Deggans and Stephanie Sandberg

The Primetime Emmy Awards are the culmination of the television season, honoring the best in American prime time television over the past year and celebrating the individuals who bring storytelling to life onscreen – from the actors and screenwriters to production designers and cinematographers. Ahead of the 78th Emmy Awards, airing Sept. 14, Washington and Lee University’s Eric Deggans, Knight Professor of Journalism and Media Ethics, and Stephanie Sandberg, associate professor of theater and film, examine Hollywood’s biggest night in television.

Deggans and Sandberg both study the cultural impact of media, providing unique perspectives on the current state of television. Deggans serves as a critic-at-large at NPR (after previously serving nearly 12 years as the network’s first full-time TV critic), and Sandberg teaches courses on screenwriting and documentary filmmaking, with her current research focusing on theater for social justice. Below, they discuss what this year’s Emmy nominees say about our current moment, how streaming has affected the way we consume television, why storytelling can help people make sense of the world around them and why shows like “The Pitt” have captivated viewers and critics alike.

Television can reflect society’s interests, anxieties, etc. What do this year’s Emmy nominees say about our current moment?

Deggans: The Emmy nominees this year reveal a healthy appreciation of shows that are new takes on traditional TV series (“The Pitt” as a medical drama, “Abbott Elementary” as a network TV situation comedy) and a love for shows which are pioneering new ways of telling stories (the sci-fi drama “Pluribus,” the horror/comedy/drama blend of “Widow’s Bay” and the dramatic comedy of “The Bear” and “Margo’s Got Money Troubles.”

Sandberg: Look at what keeps recurring: hospitals, embassies, unraveling institutions and people trying to do competent work inside systems that are failing them. “The Pitt,” “The Diplomat,” “Paradise,” “Pluribus” – these are stories about labor and exhaustion, about whether expertise still matters. Meanwhile, “The Gilded Age” and “Your Friends & Neighbors” turn over the question of inherited wealth and class resentment. Television has become our forum for arguing about trust.

How has streaming affected the way we engage with and consume media?

Deggans: There are still so many high-quality TV shows out there that it is difficult even for Emmy voters to keep track. It also affects how TV series are constructed; producers and writers are creating shows which delay dramatic moments so that viewers watch more episodes of a series or that restate plot points so people watching while looking at their cellphones won’t lose track of the plot.

Sandberg: Streaming first privatized viewing and taught us to consume a season in a weekend, which flattened the anticipation serial storytelling was built on. But look at what is winning now; “The Pitt,” “Pluribus,” “Hacks,” “The Gilded Age” and “Slow Horses” all rolled out one episode a week, giving audiences time to argue, theorize and return. Weekly release now outnumbers the binge drop across the major services. The appointment did not die; it migrated. What streaming changed is where the conversation happens, not whether we want one. We still crave connection, and television (streaming content included) is still delivering that.

Limited series seem to be growing in popularity, while some viewers still miss the 20-episode seasons typical of a network sitcom. How does this shift reflect how we engage with television (and media) in 2026?

Deggans: I think part of the tension is between the level of quality viewers expect and the number of episodes that are possible in today’s environment. Viewers expect TV series with a level of production comparable to feature films. But it is not really possible to produce 20 episodes of a TV series — especially a drama — every year with that level of production. “The Pitt” comes closest, offering a story located on the same set every season, with pretty much the same core cast, and they offer 15 episodes every year.

Sandberg: A 22-episode sitcom season was a form of companionship. I felt like I lived with the “Friends” and “Seinfeld” characters, and the pleasure was recurrence, not resolution. The limited series offers the opposite pleasure, the shapeliness of a novel that ends. Both survive because they answer different needs, and it is worth noting that “The Pitt” and “Abbott Elementary” both work partly because they restore that weekly, ongoing rhythm. What we lost in the streaming era was not episode count so much as duration, the slow accumulation of familiarity that makes fictional people feel like neighbors.

How can receiving a prestigious award cement a show or actor’s legacy?

Deggans: In today’s fragmented media environment, it is a sign to the industry that the show matters and it may be a signal to potential viewers that they should check out the show because it is good. Emmys have a long history with this — success at the awards show raised awareness of programs like “All in the Family,” “The Simpsons” and “Cheers,” helping them draw the level of audience that cemented their status as TV classics.

Sandberg: Awards do not create quality, but they create durability. A statuette becomes the shorthand by which a show enters syllabi, retrospectives, archives and the streaming algorithms that decide what stays available. For an actor, it often works as permission, an unlocking of the roles they were not previously trusted with. As someone who teaches film and theater history, I am always conscious that canon formation is partly bureaucratic: Someone voted. Recognition is how a work stops being a season of television and starts being a reference point. However, I am highly aware that many voices are not being heard — and not being awarded statuettes — particularly women and people of color. It’s disturbing.

“The Pitt” seems to have particularly captivated viewers and critics alike. What do you think makes the show so appealing across audiences?

Deggans: It’s a compelling blend of traditional TV — the medical drama — with new flourishes, which make it feel fresh. It has a real-time format where every episode covers an hour in the characters’ lives; it digs into their internal psychological issues in ways that feel authentic and new, and it offers a host of fresh new actors, anchored by a well-known performer in the medical drama space, former “ER” star Noah Wyle.

Sandberg: It respects work. The show is built on procedure, on the unglamorous competence of people doing difficult things under pressure, and its near-real-time structure means we cannot skip the waiting or the aftermath. That formal choice is the whole argument: Attention is the moral act. It is also genuinely an ensemble piece. The residents, nurses and charge staff all carry storylines, so the drama comes from how a team absorbs pressure rather than from one figure’s brilliance. Audiences across ages recognize that. Most of us work inside systems where the outcome depends on whoever is standing next to us.

How does television (or the entertainment industry in general) create a communal experience, and why is this important?

Deggans: I think the challenge right now is that TV isn’t creating the kind of communal experience that it once did. People are watching many different series at different times. Some people are just starting to watch “The Pitt” based on its visibility as a successful show, while others watch every episode the second they are released. The result is a wide array of really great TV shows, but not many programs that most TV viewers have seen, beyond a Super Bowl game.

Sandberg: Live events like the Emmys persist because so little else is simultaneous anymore. Shared viewing does what theater does; it puts us in the presence of the same story at the same time and lets us discover that other people were moved by it too. That recognition is not trivial; it is the beginning of public discourse. My students often arrive having watched everything and discussed nothing. When a show becomes genuinely communal, it gives strangers a common set of characters to think with, which is one of the few things our fragmented culture still manages.

How can storytelling help people feel connected to their communities, or make sense of the world around them?

Deggans: Well-made TV shows depict characters going through emotional journeys that viewers can identify with. Noah Wyle’s character on “The Pitt” is struggling with burnout and a sense of futility in a high-stress job. Harrison Ford’s character in “Shrinking” is trying to cope with a late-in-life romance and a serious disease that will eventually cripple him. These are situations people have either experienced or fear they will experience, and these stories can show people they are not alone.

Sandberg: Narrative is how we practice other people’s interiority. We rehearse grief, moral compromise and repair in conditions where the stakes are borrowed, and we come out with a slightly larger repertoire for our own lives. Television is unusually good at this because of its duration. Fifty hours with a character teaches you that people are not consistent, that change is slow and reversible. That is a genuinely humanistic lesson.

How would you teach a class that incorporates Emmy-nominated television?

Deggans: I have done so — one way is to talk about why certain shows are nominated for awards and others aren’t. I have also used the Emmy nominations to talk about TV’s struggle to reflect the country’s ethnic and cultural diversity, by looking at the lack of diversity in nominees.

Sandberg: I would build it around form and labor. Students would watch a single episode closely, then read the script, then attempt a scene themselves, because you cannot understand “The Pitt”’s real-time structure until you have tried to sustain tension across an uninterrupted take. We would study how a season is engineered, how showrunning distributes authorship and how awards bodies shape reputation. Then the harder question: Whose stories get financed, and by whom? Contemporary television is a fantastic classroom text because students arrive with visual fluency, but they don’t yet know how to study it and that’s the fun part! Breaking it down, critically reading it and enjoying all its complexities.