The Emmys broadcast last Sunday on NBC attracted 13.5 million viewers, making it the largest non-sports audience so far in 2010, at least since the airing of FOX’s American Idol finale on May 26. This is also the largest audience the Emmys has had in four years but it’s still over a quarter less than what the awards attracted 10 years ago.

The Oscars also had a similar ratings rebound this year, garnering the highest ratings since 2005. The Oscars are also off their ratings highs of 50+ million viewers (achieved in 1983 and 1998), but althought they’re down the Oscars haven’t lost as much audience percentagewise as the Emmys.

In any case as far as viewership these television events pale in comparison to major sporting events. This year the Superbowl attracted a record audience of 106.5 million, well over double the audience of the Oscars and close to ten times that of the Emmys. Incidentally the World Cup Final had only 24.3 million viewers, which places it in third place behind the Oscars.

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,