‘How I Met Your Mother’ Honored as the Number One Comedy Show in the World, A Year After It Went Off the Air

At the Monte Carlo TV Festival over the weekend, comedy series “How I Met Your Mother” was honored with its first International Audience Award for the best program in its genre. The citation comes a year after the series has bowed out of television.

According to Deadline, this is the first time that the award was given to a show that is no longer on television. The winner in the drama series category is “NCIS,” who wins the honor for a second time this year. Both shows are from CBS. Other recipients of the said award in the past included “The Big Bang Theory” and “Modern Family”  for comedy and “The Mentalist,” “CSI,” and “House” for drama.

The most popular TV shows were picked based on Eurodata, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

“How I Met Your Mother,” which stars Josh Radnor, Jason Segel, Cobie Smulders, Neil Patrick Harris, Alyson Hannigan and Cristin Milioti, ran for nine seasons from 2005 to 2014. In its final year, the show had a controversial series finale as fans became hugely disappointed with how the series creators ended the show. Many believed it had contradicted a lot of what transpired in the previous episodes.

The Monte Carlo TV Festival has been going on since 1961 in Monaco. It was founded by Prince Rainier III as a way to elevate the medium of television. Today Prince Albert is the festivities honorary president.