CBS now stands for “the Caucasian Broadcast System.”
Nate Bargatze kicked off the 2025 Emmys with a sketch that poked fun at television in general, saving his biggest burn for the network that had hired him to host the show, CBS.
Instead of a normal monologue, Bargatze opened the 77th annual Emmy awards with a sketch that evoked his recurring “George Washington” Saturday Night Live skits where the Tennessee-bred comic pretends to predict the most nonsensical parts of American life back in 1776. For Emmys night, however, Bargatze played the fictional inventor of television, Philo T. Farnsworth.
On stage, Bargatze was joined by SNL faves Bowen Yang, James Austin Johnson, and Mikey Day. All three played techs working in Philo’s workshop, asking their boss questions about the future of their invention.
Bargatze’s character poked fun at Severance‘s baffling concept, The Bear‘s super serious subject matter, and the mystery behind what exactly producers do before mocking hyper-specialized cable channels. After joking about how there’s never any learning on The Learning Channel (TLC) or real history on the History Channel, Philo talks about how one day there will be something on television for everyone.
