Nominees for this year’s Emmy awards were released this morning, and many of the nominees have been showered with Emmy love many times before. AMC’s Mad Men—winner of the Outstanding Drama Emmy for each of its first four seasons— was nominated 17 times. ABC’s Modern Family—winner of the last two Emmys for Outstanding Comedy—snagged 14 noms. Breaking Bad, 30 Rock, The Amazing Race, and The Good Wife also managed to (again) wow the TV industry in one way or another.
There were some newcomers, too. American Horror Story—nominated, oddly, as a miniseries—scored 17 nominations. PBS’ Downton Abbey (which was crowned last year’s best miniseries) pulled in 16 nominations as a drama.
The nominations certainly suggest how far the major networks have fallen behind cable in terms of artistic quality. None of the six nominees for best drama (Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Homeland, Downton Abbey, Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire) are traditional network shows (though most folks can admittedly watch Downton Abbey without the help of a cable package). Three can only be seen on premium cable.
Broadcast television made more of an impact in the comedy division—a traditional strength. But, again, premium cable made the biggest wave. Three nominees for best comedy—Curb Your Enthusiasm, Girls and Veep—were HBO programs. Three broadcast networks combined for the other three: Big Bang Theory (CBS), Modern Family (ABC) and 30 Rock (NBC).
HBO scored 81 nominations overall, compared to CBS’ 60 and PBS’ 58. And while HBO is indeed home to some quality shows, it’s also almost laughably notorious for sticking gratuitous content in wherever it can: Critics have regularly noted Game of Thrones‘ propensity to engage in “sexposition”—that is, to have its characters disgorge dry-but-important dialogue in the middle of explicit sex scenes.
And that underscores an unfortunate trend we see in these Emmy nominations.
Take a look at the dramatic nominees again. Four of the six regularly bear a TV-MA rating—the rough equivalent of an R brand for film. A fifth, Mad Men, tends to sport a less-restrictive TV-14, but it’s still loaded with sexual content, drinking and smoking. Downton Abbey is the only nominated program that could be even remotely described as a “family” show, and even that lauded PBS drama makes an occasional foray into unfortunate content.
To be fair, most of these shows—as problematic as they are—deserve their nominations. Artistically, they can be excellent.
But why are the best shows also the dirtiest? Why must television viewers be asked to make a no-win compromise between quality and content? We saw at the 2012 Academy Awards that sex and violence need not be present to make a great movie. Did television executives miss the memo?
Suits at the networks lament their slowly eroding ratings. They gnash their teeth over the license cable channels can take with their shows and presume that if their programs were able to engage in a little “sexposition” too, their worries would be over: They’d be able to compete not just for viewers, but for major awards.
But it’s not the sex that makes for quality entertainment, not the violence. It’s the story—and, of course, how that story’s told. PBS understands this. Pixar does too. Martin Scorcese (Hugo), Steven Spielberg (War Horse) and Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist) all illustrated this simple truth at the Oscars.
I pray that a visionary within the realm of broadcast television may be given the freedom to tell such a story—a story the whole family can truly enjoy together—sometime in the very near future, and that the Emmys won’t look quite so “MA” anymore.
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