With so much of prime-time network television being taken over by so-called reality shows, it is no wonder that the big winners at the 60th Primetime Emmys — an awards show that mainly celebrates acting and writing — would hail from cable rather than from the broadcast networks.
HBO, the perennial Emmy powerhouse, took home the most golden statuettes on Sunday, winning 26 Emmys, including awards for its made-for-television movie Recount, its mini-series John Adams, its comedy series Entourage and its drama series In Treatment.
AMC, the cable channel formerly known as American Movie Classics, won three awards, two of them for its first-year scripted series, Mad Men, which won best drama series, and one for Breaking Bad, which, with only seven episodes, was almost a mini-series. FX, the cable channel that is a cousin of the Fox network, also won two acting awards for its rookie-season drama, Damages, including one for Glenn Close, who was named best actress in a drama series.
The viewers of all those shows added together might not total the number that watched the Emmys broadcast. But television executives are nothing if not optimistic, and if anything, the performance of the five reality-show hosts who together played masters of ceremony on the awards show might inspire the executives not to abandon scripted television.
Broadcast television did capture some of its own accolades, with NBC’s 30 Rock sweeping the major comedy awards. It won best comedy series for the second straight year, Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin took home the awards for best comedy actress and actor, and Fey took home another award for her writing of the episode titled Cooter.
Fey, who last year thanked the “dozens” of people who watched the show, reminded viewers this year than the show “can be viewed on NBC.com, Hulu, iTunes, United Airlines and occasionally on actual television.”
ABC won three awards, two of them for much-admired first-year series. Jean Smart won best supporting actress for her role as a straight-talking mother on Samantha Who?, and Barry Sonnenfeld won the award for directing a comedy series for the pilot episode of Pushing Daisies. Those were two of the few new comedy series to survive last year’s strike-interrupted television season. ABC’s third victory was by Louis J. Horvitz for directing the 80th Academy Awards.
Though the theme of Emmys ceremony was a celebration of the golden age of television, that served only to highlight that much of the best work being done for the small screen today appears not on the networks but on cable.
Matthew Weiner, the creator of Mad Men, said that the distinctions between network and cable mean little anymore. “If you did a show like LA Law right now, I think it would end up on FX,” he said in an interview on the red carpet. “There’s nothing on my show that can’t be shown on network television. It’s just they’re appealing to a different kind of audience. They have their audience and I have my audience, and I think it’s nice to have something for everybody.”
David Shore, an executive producer of House, MD, the top-rated Fox drama that was also a nominee for best drama series, said the disparities in audience rightly had little bearing on awards like the Emmys.
“There are awards for that; they’re called ratings,” Shore said. “There are really good shows on cable, and even if only 10 people are watching them, if they’re good they should be recognized. The shows they’ve selected are excellent.”
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