Emmys Post-Mortem: Awards Healthy, Show DOA

Last night was the 60th Emmy awards show, broadcast on ABC. I generally don't watch award shows, though the Golden Globes tends to be a bit more lively and interesting because it's a dinner and everyone's drinking. But since I spent the time writing up my Emmy nomination observations a couple of months ago, I felt somewhat obligated to watch the show. Yeesh, what a waste of three hours that was.

It was mind-numbingly bad, due mostly to the conceit of having the five nominees for best reality show host serve as the host of the awards show itself. Wait, they give out an Emmy for reality show host now? Seriously? What a useless waste of whatever metal those statues are made of. Their collective "bit" was that they didn't have any material prepared, and it fell flat. It was clear that the audience thought the hosts were just fooling around, but the joke was on them, and those of us watching at home: they really didn't have anything prepared.

That right there, inside the first ten minutes of the show, should have warned me to change the channel or go find something else to do with my time. But I didn't, to my regret. A bit later on we were "treated" to singer Josh Groban (who is he, again? I've heard of him but I have no idea what sort of stuff he does) performing a medley of TV show theme songs. I hit the mute button and went to the kitchen to get some ice cream. Next year I'll just wait until the show is over and read the list of winners online.

With regard to the shows that won the awards, today the critics are noting how the majority of the big winners were shows on cable networks, with the exceptions of supporting actress in a comedy (Jean Smart for ABC's Samantha Who?) and NBC's great 30 Rock's wins for best actor, best actress, and best comedy. 30 Rock is always going to be an underdog in the ratings, because it lacks the mainstream appeal of workplace comedies like The Drew Carey Show or Mary Tyler Moore. It's point of view is deliberately absurd, and much funnier for it, but as long as it collects awards and critical praise, NBC will probably keep it around.

By now, a lot of people have heard the story of how Matthew Weiner, the creator of critical darling and last night's best drama winner Mad Men, pitched the show to HBO when he was working as a writer on The Sopranos, and never got any kind of response from them, not even a rejection. Surely HBO's execs are kicking themselves now. Awards and buzz don't translate into revenue in quite as direct a way as ratings do, but you can be fairly sure that AMC is planning to start charging more for ad time on Mad Men now that it's the network's signature show.

And it's not always entirely about ratings. A show like Damages might draw two or three times as many viewers if it aired on one of the big broadcast networks, but when people who do watch it start talking about it to their friends, and then people who don't watch the show see Glenn Close win an Emmy, it raises the cultural profile of the FX network along with the show.

The proliferation of drama shows on cable networks is a clear sign that the television audience is becoming more fragmented and less of a mass audience than, say, a decade ago. But more importantly, it shows that quality shows are finding audiences on cable channels, and being recognized by the academy for their work. I believe this is due at least in part to the networks' over-reliance on reality shows. How ironic, then, that the networks fill much of their schedules with this debris, then have to sit by and watch as cable channels like HBO and even basic cable networks like AMC and FX reap the most prestigious awards.

To be fair, there are reality shows on cable too. There are plenty of people who are happy to watch reality TV; my mother is a huge fan of The Amazing Race, and my understanding is that it's better than most other reality shows. But there are also plenty of people like me who prefer scripted TV, and will seek out the thoughtful, entertaining shows on whatever networks they air.