‘Anna Nicole’ in the running

So what if Mr. Blackwell named her the worst-dressed woman of 2002? So what if her slurred Texas drawl and exaggerated makeup and weight problems, splashed in front of America on her reality TV show for the past two seasons, made her one of pop culture’s leading caricatures?

Anna Nicole Smith’s show, at least, is finally an honored member of the television establishment.

Although it was easy to miss Thursday amid the hundreds of nominees announced in nearly 90 categories -- from stunt coordination to prosthetic makeup to hairstyling for a miniseries -- “The Anna Nicole Show” on E! finished only 15 Emmy nominations behind “Six Feet Under,” earning a nomination for main title design.

“It definitely makes me feel better that despite all the criticism of the show, it’s been recognized for an Emmy award,” said co-nominee Elizabeth Schricker, E!’s art director of creative services, who designed the animated opening’s kitschy, retro-cartoonish, “Bewitched”-like look. “But for me it’s more about the specific work I did for the show. I’m just excited because I’ve been doing this for a long time and never had such an honorable award.”

The spread-the-wealth nature of the awards nominations means that many shows that never made critics’ choice lists had a moment of recognition Thursday. Theoretically, they have a chance to bring home a statuette when the awards in the non-glamour categories are handed out Sept. 13. (You didn’t think shows like “Miracles,” nominated for main title theme music, “My Big Fat Greek Life,” nominated for a multi-camera series, or “Smucker’s Stars on Ice,” nominated for choreography, would make the televised show on Sept. 21, did you?)

“The Anna Nicole Show” nominees, Schricker, 32, and Dave Foss, 34, are among the tens of thousands who labor invisibly in the TV-production food chain. Schricker was born in New Jersey, studied graphic design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, started doing entertainment fashion 11 years ago and moved to L.A. two years later. She has worked at E! since 2001.

Foss, who works for the animation production firm Klasky-Csupo, is Chicago-born with a varied career in short films and graphic design. He came West four years ago and was hired to direct the “Anna Nicole” title spot.

It was a challenging assignment, he said, because “we had a very short schedule; from concept to completion it was two weeks.” The spot was designed to touch quickly and good-naturedly on more than half a dozen mostly tawdry signposts of Smith’s much-belittled life as a poor girl, model, stripper and suddenly rich widow.

That notoriety “just added to the fun” of working on the project, Foss said, the fact that “it was a total oddball out in left field, the best of the worst, the worst of the best, whatever you want to call it.”

Other nominees for outstanding main title design are HBO’s “Hysterical Blindness” and “Normal,” A&E;’s “Napoleon” and Showtime’s Penn & Teller series.