Emmys: Much to Praise, but 4 Hours’ Worth?

The Emmy Awards should really be called the Any Awards, because it often seems like anyone can win one. Nearly six dozen categories were included in this year’s list of Emmy nominees, announced in late July.

Fortunately, only 27 will be given out on the Emmy telecast Sept. 13 on NBC.

Unfortunately, the telecast will be at least four hours long, its producers say, because it marks the 50th annual prime-time Emmy celebration. An appropriate gift to viewers would have been to reduce the running time, not to expand it.

Scanning the list of top nominees, it does seem like there’s plenty to praise in the TV season that concluded in May. Nominees for top comedy series include great shows like “Frasier,” “Seinfeld” and “The Larry Sanders Show.” Both “Seinfeld” and “Sanders” ended their runs this year.

The category also includes, however, NBC’s screamingly inane “3rd Rock From the Sun” and, for the first time, a one-hour show among the sitcoms: Fox’s “Ally McBeal,” that kooky show about the loopy lawyer that has become something of a cult hit on Monday nights.

It helps that TV Guide, which, like Fox, is mostly owned by Rupert Murdoch, has been promoting the show relentlessly, just as it does “The X-Files,” another Fox series smothered with multiple nominations.

David E. Kelley has made Emmy history this year because he produces both “Ally McBeal” and ABC’s “The Practice,” nominated for best drama. It’s a first for a writer-producer to have nominations in the two most important series categories in one year. And Kelley does a good deal of the writing on both shows.

The only problem is, “Ally McBeal” will never stand the test of time. It’s a passing fad, a bubble floating on the airwaves. And because Kelley can hardly compare in stature and talent to some of the greatest series producers of all time--people like Norman Lear, Grant Tinker, Steven Bochco, Lorne Michaels, Danny Thomas, maybe even Desi Arnaz (who produced “The Untouchables” as well as “I Love Lucy”)--it seems sad that Kelley’s the one to get into the history books.

According to academy rules, though, Kelley was allowed to submit “McBeal” in either the comedy or the drama category, which has some other producers in Hollywood grumbling and carping.

As expected, HBO dominates the movie and miniseries categories, especially with its ambitious docudrama miniseries “From the Earth to the Moon.” This was producer Tom Hanks’ epochal epic on the American space effort of the ‘60s and ‘70s, a time of dreaming great dreams and achieving them. In other words, it’s a nostalgia piece; such times appear to be over.

The cable industry used to give out its own awards, the CableACEs, in its own rather pathetic annual shindig. But they’re out, abandoned as of last season, and cable competes side by side with broadcast networks in the Emmy arena. Daily Variety’s Ray Richmond observed, “One could make the argument that . . . this is the year that the rest of cable began to get taken seriously.” By “the rest” he means everybody except HBO.

We are obviously living in a time of great shifts and changes in telecommunications. The evolution of the Emmys is only a tiny sign of that. If there are more nominations than ever, it has to be admitted that there is more television than ever. Whether one considers this trend glorious or abhorrent, it’s going to accelerate.

When digital television arrives, probably after the turn of the century, there will be another explosion of channels and choices. That also means, alas, that there will be more chances than ever for people with lame ideas and little talent to get themselves TV programs. Maybe we will eventually look back at the four-hour length of this year’s Emmy telecast and say with a sigh, “Those were the good old days.”

But I doubt it.