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When the
1960s period piece Mad Men won the Emmy for
Outstanding Drama Series at Sunday’s 60th annual Emmy
Awards, it made history in at least two ways. It became
the first basic-cable program to take top series honors.
But it also added a more dubious mark: Compared with
previous Emmy series winners, Mad Men is by far
the least-watched, with an average of fewer than 1
million viewers tuning in during its first season last
year. That’s a fraction of the audience of even NBC’s
ever-ratings-challenged 30 Rock, which again took
the comedy prize this year.
Oprah
Winfrey said at the outset of the award telecast,
“Nothing connects us quite like television.” The
sentiment may be hard to argue with, but it’s out of
step with the times. Anyone who bothers to look at the
ratings can see that prime-time TV is no longer the
great connector it once was. It may be the only
remaining medium that can still unite 30 million people
for, say, a broadcast phenomenon such as American Idol.
But disproportionate amounts of attention online, in
print and among TV academy voters are now devoted to
niche programs such as Top Chef, Damages and
Mad Men.
And for
the most part, that trend is the culmination of an
explosion of original programming that has taken place
on basic-cable networks over the past several seasons.
Whatever their flaws—and you don’t have to be a TV
fanatic to discern many of those—the Emmys have over
time reflected the broad trends that shape television
programming.
The
awards may not react as quickly as some critics would
like. But over the last few years academy voters have
rewarded once-bit players such as AMC and Showtime for
the huge investments they have made in original comedies
and dramas.
In 1993
HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show made history by
becoming the first cable series to draw a best series
nomination. Earlier this decade, HBO series were
actually taking home the prizes: Sex and the City
in 2001 and The Sopranos three years later. Now,
no one questions that cable could easily corner the
market on “quality” programming.
This has
happened relatively quickly. During the ’80s,
then-nascent cable programming wasn’t even eligible for
Emmy recognition. Networks dominated all—sometimes
single networks. In 1987 all five of the comedy nominees
were NBC shows (including the winner, The Golden
Girls). But over the last decade, the networks have
beat a partial retreat from expensive scripted series
and big-budget “long form” programming. Instead, they
are putting on more low-budget reality and game shows.
Thus the
Emmys now reflect a TV world that keeps fragmenting into
ever-smaller tribes. The huge investment made by the
basic-cable networks has resulted in shows that win
near-network-sized viewers—most notably, TNT’s cop drama
The Closer—as well as shows that win Emmys. It
has seldom resulted in shows that do both. Because the
basic-cable networks put on far less original
programming than their broadcast counterparts—typically,
two or three hours per week, versus 22 hours weekly for
ABC, CBS or NBC—they can afford to be strategic in how
they develop and market new shows.
Meanwhile, HBO—which dominated the series categories
during the glory days of Sex and the City and
The Sopranos earlier this decade, but is in a fallow
period with its drama series these days—collected the
bulk of its trophies Sunday for its movies and
miniseries, such as John Adams and Recount.
And broadcasters, which have devoted more hours of late
to inexpensive reality programming, have found
themselves increasingly sidelined at Emmy time. The TV
academy has taken pains to give the unscripted genre its
proper due; indeed, Survivor host Jeff Probst,
one of five Emmy cohosts, specifically thanked voters
for including reality series when picking up his trophy.
Sunday
night brought several upsets that might have proved
actually upsetting if viewers had more at stake in the
outcomes. Bryan Cranston was nominated three times but
never won as the dad in Malcolm in the Middle, which
looks destined to go down in history as network TV’s
last hit family comedy. Instead, Cranston won Sunday for
Breaking Bad, the little-seen AMC drama that
aired a strike-shortened season of just seven episodes.
Likewise, Glenn Close won her first series Emmy for
Damages, FX’s ratings-challenged legal thriller.
That was maybe not surprising, although Zeljko Ivanek’s
victory as supporting actor certainly was. In his
category he cruised past old hands such as William
Shatner (Boston Legal) and Ted Danson (also of
Damages).
Indeed,
these days the Emmys sometimes look as if they are
attempting to bestow “event” status on programs that
might not otherwise capture that distinction. HBO’s
miniseries John Adams drew modest audiences and
divided critics, but nevertheless won a record 13 Emmys.
That’s four more than the total for the ABC miniseries
Roots, a landmark TV event that riveted the
nation for eight straight nights in 1977. Of course,
that disparity may be partly because Roots came
at a time when many other networks were competing to
make long-form dramas. The same cannot be said of
John Adams.
Indeed,
it may be a sign of these culturally divided times that
Mad Men, the little show that made history, did
not mount anything resembling an Emmy sweep. Out of its
16 nominations, the show won six awards. |
