Emmy nominations focus on freshman shows

Like Oscars for the movies and Tonys for Broadway, The Emmys are often considered to be the biggest possible award for Television Shows. This past Thursday, the Emmy nominations were announced and while many of the nominations were easy to predict, there were more than a few surprises thrown in there as well.

The Oscars have long been known for praising smaller, independent films that fewer people have heard about while snubbing the bigger hits and more universally appealing films. This hasn’t seemed to be the case with the Emmys because if a show is not a big hit then it ends up being cancelled. However as more and more cable channels delve into original programming it is possible for these more obscure shows to stay on and earn Emmy nominations. In the biggest category, Best Drama series, only two of the shows are on network television, with Lost being the only really big show. Other nominated shows such as Breaking Bad and Mad Men, both on AMC, get only a fraction of the viewers that the final season of Lost drew in each week but they have a much greater chance of taking home the statue.

This year the Emmys seemed to focus on newer shows, while nominations of past years Emmy winners was kept to a surprising minimum. Freshman show Modern Family earned 14 different nominations including Best Comedy series as five of the major acting nominations (with Ed O’Neill being the only snub). On the other hand, Grey’s Anatomy, which has had a nomination in the major categories for the past six years only received two nominations this year, one for Outstanding Makeup and one for Outstanding Prosthetic Makeup. Continuing the “in with the new” mentality, of the 48 acting nominees over the eight major categories over half of them were new nominees with fourteen of those coming from freshman series.

As is the case every year, there were a few shows that, despite good critical reaction and strong fan bases, were snubbed by the Emmys. Three fourths of NBC’s Thursday Must See TV lineup received some form of nomination, but Community failed to get a nomination in any category. Also the final seasons of Law and Order, Ugly Betty and 24 were shut out, despite each of those shows being big Emmy winning shows in years past. Courtney Cox also received lots of praise for her work on freshman series Cougar Town, but as the only cast member on Friends to never get nominated in the show’s ten-year run, she was once again snubbed in her new show by the Emmys.

One of the most interesting surprises came in the Variety, Music, or comedy special with a nomination for The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, putting it with shows such as The Colbert Report, The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live. Despite in only lasting seven months before being replaced by Leno it’s nice to see O’Brian’s Tonight show get the much-deserved honor. (It should be noted that both The Jay Leno Show and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno failed to get nominated.)

Even with the lineup of awards that will be given out on Emmy night, there are still several Emmys that we will not get a chance to see the winners of. For example there is an Emmy Category for best commercial with nominations including the popular Old Spice commercial found http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE. (The other nominations for “Best Commercial can be found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1w_wDhpugw)