And the comedy statues - for "30 Rock," for actress Tina Fey, for actor Alec Baldwin, as well as for supporting players Jeremy Piven of HBO's "Entourage" and Jean Smart of ABC's "Samantha Who?" - all represent pretty small potatoes in the Nielsen basket. The night seemed to belong to niche programming, with very few nods to popular hits - Fox's "House," for example, or CBS's "Two and a Half Men." Even the reality-competition prize went to a small show - CBS's "Amazing Race" - as opposed to a crowd pleaser such as "American Idol" or "Dancing With the Stars."
Many of the big winners last night were from the cable side of TV - with "Mad Men" the first-ever basic cable show to win a best series prize. Not that pay cable didn't get its due: HBO's movies and miniseries were all the rage - "John Adams" took best miniseries, actor (Paul Giamatti), actress (Laura Linney), and supporting actor (Tom Wilkinson), and HBO's "Recount" won best movie. But officially long gone are the days of network dominance, with basic cable emerging as a threat even to revered pay-cable outlets such as HBO.
As if anticipating this disconnect between the winners and the Emmy telecast viewing audience, the entertainment on last night's show played to the mainstream, with an emphasis on reality TV. Giving us five reality hosts was the Emmys' not-so-swift effort to hold viewers, since these folks - Jeff Probst, Howie Mandel, Heidi Klum, Tom Bergeron, and Ryan Seacrest - preside over some of TV's most highly rated shows, particularly "American Idol." Meanwhile, the random audience shots stayed away from the lesser-known likes of "Mad Men" star Jon Hamm.
After an intro by Oprah Winfrey, during which she managed to defend TV by reminding us she uses the medium to sell books, the hosts came onstage. Nominees in the new reality-host category, they jovially pretended to be winging it as if they were on reality TV, as if reality TV is really about winging it, as if we care.
They talked over one another and didn't manage to make a single decent joke. It was a disaster.
