Yesterday the nominees for the 61st Annual Emmy Awards were announced. This year amount of the nominees for the Outstanding Drama and Outsanding Comedy were expanded from five to seven. The nominees are as follows:

Outstanding Drama: Big Love, Breaking Bad, Damages, Dexter, House, Lost, Mad Men

Outstanding Comedy: Entourage, Family Guy, Flight of the Conchords, How I Met Your Mother, The Office, 30 Rock, Weeds

Cable has steadily been growing its share of the nominations during the past ten years. At first only HBO used to have a regular stake but during the past two years new players have emerged and this year AMC has two drama nominations, the same as HBO. Cable networks, especially premium cable networks like HBO and Showtime, don’t have to limit or censor their productions like broadcast networks, allowing their dramas to push the envelope further and have a more sophisticated appeal. It also helps that the production budgets for cable productions have grown greatly over the past few years. Not coincidentally, many pundits in the broadcast industry argue that stations and networks need to reclaim their position by consolidating bigger budgets (perhaps through retransmission fees) and investing in better programming.

The broadcast networks have managed to maintain their control over the nominations for Outstanding Comedy, although I do believe that this category is merely lagging and cable will soon also take the majority of the nominations.

This might also be an incomplete picture since comedies fall into other categories. For example The Daily Show and The Colbert Report were nominated in the Outstanding Variety, Music Or Comedy Series category, and South Park was nominated for Outstanding Animated Program,