Emmy nominations put networks back in the game

Nineteen Emmy nominations for Fox’s singalong sleeper “Glee”? Fourteen nods for “Modern Family,” the ABC show that has resuscitated the sitcom genre from its recently mourned demise?

Such glad tidings Thursday for broadcast bosses: The legacy networks are back, if not hogging the Emmy nominations, at least holding their own against the more daring, critical darlings of cable TV. After suffering through a brutal writers strike in 2007-08, plummeting ratings and ever-fiercer cable and Internet competition, broadcasters can finally start humming along with that unofficial “Glee” anthem, “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Why, Emmy voters on Thursday morning even tossed some laurels toward Conan O’Brien.

You know Conan. The dude who got fired by NBC and is headed to … um … basic cable.

The Emmys are, as ever, more a reflection of how the TV business wants to see itself than how it really is, so trying to draw lessons from the voting patterns can be hazardous. Cable still mops up a lot of the programming prestige that the networks took for granted 20 or 30 years ago; HBO was again the most-nominated outlet this year, with 101 nods (although nearly one-quarter of that tally came from a single piece of award bait, the Tom Hanks- and Steven Spielberg-produced World War II miniseries epic “The Pacific”). But the fresh batch of Emmy results suggests that the broadcasters have battled back enough to prove their programming model isn’t dead yet, at least in terms of voters’ approval.

“More than anything, the nominations show a shift in what networks are willing to take on,” said Ryan Murphy, the co-creator and executive producer of “Glee,” who rose to prominence toiling in the cable vineyards with FX’s “ Nip/Tuck.” “Networks are finally willing to take risks. Before, you went to cable for that. That’s what I did when I worked on ‘Nip/Tuck.’ I was like, ‘Forget this network bull.’ But Fox really let me be creative with this show. Networks aren’t about being more broad anymore, they’re getting more personal with their programs.”

Or, to put it another way, the network bosses are making shows that look more like cable fare: more singular and adventurous and sometimes aimed at narrower audiences.

With Julianna Margulies playing a lawyer trying to rebuild her life after a shattering personal setback, “The Good Wife” marked a successful bid for the older female demographic that has been lured by cable procedurals such as “The Closer,” the now-defunct “Saving Grace” and the cancellation-endangered “Damages” (whose lead, Glenn Close, has already won twice for her role and was nominated again Thursday). With “Modern Family,” ABC finally hit the jackpot after networks spent years trying to adapt the freewheeling, single-camera, mockumentary style of cable comedies for the traditional family sitcom.

The best drama category has for the last several years been dominated by “Mad Men” and other cable programs; “The Good Wife” became the first new broadcast show to crack that category since NBC’s “Heroes” in 2007. ABC’s “ Lost,” which ended its run amid a blaze of hype, drew its fourth nomination in the category, along with a first-ever Emmy nomination for star Matthew Fox. Meanwhile, voters handed big disses to highly publicized new cable efforts such as HBO’s “Treme” and FX’s “Justified.”

In the long-slumping comedy category, the traditional networks have long held an advantage; even so, “Modern Family” gives Emmy voters a chance finally to honor a show other than NBC’s “ 30 Rock.” Even in the reality TV arena, what sizzle there was came from a nod for a new broadcast show, CBS’ “Undercover Boss.” Snooki and friends from MTV’s “Jersey Shore” were shut out.

In fact, all the big broadcast networks scored more Emmy nominations this year than last, except for accident-prone NBC, which happens to be broadcasting the ceremony live across the nation Aug. 29.

Nina Tassler, President of CBS Entertainment, hailed the Emmy tally as “a great exclamation point to a season that featured one of the best freshman classes on broadcast television in years.”

So it’s time to cancel that cable subscription? Well, not quite. Cable still has a lock on many categories, including best drama (four out of six nominees). It’s a fair bet that Showtime’s darkly comic serial-killer series “Dexter” or HBO’s surging vampire drama “True Blood” will score an upset over two-time winner “Mad Men” long before “The Good Wife” will. And voters still betray a sometimes puzzling propensity to veer off for cable programmers’ less-traveled roads while bypassing more mainstream routes. How else to explain the surprise salute to “Nurse Jackie” in the comedy category, which no Emmy sage foretold?

Indeed, Emmy voters may have liked this season’s crop of new broadcast shows, but that doesn’t mean that the industry doesn’t retain a certain disdain for the legacy networks, which are still often viewed as brittle relics of an earlier epoch.

Nowhere was that more pointed than in voters’ embrace (in the comedy and variety category) of “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien,” which NBC bumped off the air this year after an embarrassing dust-up that reinstalled Jay Leno in late night after a disastrous prime-time experiment. Before the switch, O’Brien’s “Tonight” was widely seen as a bumpy work-in-progress. But the ousted host has since become a folk hero, which means voters might well use their Emmy ballots to send a message to a certain network. Really, with the O’Brien-Leno affair, NBC gave itself a gift that keeps on giving.

In the fall, O’Brien will start his new show on TBS — a network that, by the way, scored not a single Emmy nomination this year.