HBO set a new standard of dominance in American television yesterday with 124 Emmy nominations - almost twice its nearest competitor, NBC, which had 65. Not even CBS in the early days of television, when it was known as "the Tiffany of networks," owned the high ground of programming the way these nominations say HBO does today.
The numbers across the board for individual HBO productions are eye-popping: 21 nominations for Angels in America, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play that HBO made into a miniseries; 20 for The Sopranos, television's most acclaimed drama series; 11 for Sex and the City, the sitcom that dared to get serious in its farewell season; and nine for a single film, Something the Lord Made, about a white surgeon and a black lab technician who together pioneered heart surgery in the 1940s at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.
But what makes the overall performance of the premium cable channel so impressive is that it comes in a society and television climate otherwise so fragmented. CBS had only two competitors, ABC and CBS, in the 1960s when it reigned. HBO has more than 200 today. This year, CBS got 44 nominations and ABC 33. Fox earned 31.
FOR THE RECORD - An article in yesterday's editions of The Sun about the Emmy Award nominations incorrectly listed CBS' competitors in the 1960s. They were ABC and NBC.
The Sun regrets the error.
There was no shortage of theories yesterday as to how and why HBO managed to leave the networks eating its creative dust. Network TV is boxed in by forces that limit its artistic potential - federal regulations and the economics of appealing to the largest possible audience, say industry analysts. Pay cable TV, on the other hand, can say or show almost anything it wants as long as it pleases a large enough niche of subscribers to make it profitable.
Network "broadcasters need to get a large audience, and a large audience typically has been gotten by appealing to middle American tastes," says Lawrence Lichty, a film and television professor at Northwestern University. "We're playing on two fields with two different standards and two different sets of rules."
Howard Suber, who has taught film and television at UCLA for 35 years, said HBO has taken chances with young, unproven writers and producers, and that has led to smart and successful shows. But networks, he said, are unwilling to take those chances, preferring to go with proven commodities who have a record of delivering big audiences.
Word of mouth
And he says HBO has succeeded in targeting a niche audience willing to pay for what it considers better TV programs - an audience that has created significant buzz for HBO's shows and convinced others to subscribe. (HBO has about 40 million subscribers; the networks reach 108 million homes.)
