It's not just television -- it's everything that's good on video, as far as the Emmys are concerned, a point driven home as the nominations for this year's awards were announced Thursday.
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The expected showdown for outstanding drama series spread across cable and pay television services and included some of the most highly praised shows in recent memory. AMC's Breaking Bad, in its last season, and HBO's True Detective were nominated and are expected to be strong contenders for the top honor. They were joined by Game of Thrones on HBO, which topped the list with 19 nominations, and House of Cards on Netflix, with 16.
Downton Abbey on PBS and Mad Men of AMC were the other dramas nominated.
Netflix, the subscription service, was far more a presence than it was last year, racking up 31 nominations, including major nominations in the top series and acting categories for House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black. That was more nominations than some of the networks, including Fox, which had 18.
The strong showing for Netflix was driven by 13 nominations for House of Cards and 12 for the newcomer Orange Is the New Black. Both had multiple entries in the acting categories.
Other big winners included two FX mini-series, Fargo, which racked up the second highest total of nominations with 18 and American Horror Story with 17. Breaking Bad had 16, as did the HBO movie The Normal Heart. True Detective had 12.
Saturday Night Live also scored well with 14 nominations. It continued to hang in with the late-night talk shows, earning a nomination for outstanding variety series. Also earning nominations in that category were the shows hosted by Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert, who by next year will be network competitors, as well as The Daily Show and Bill Maher on HBO.
The Emmys, set for Aug. 25 in Los Angeles, will be telecast on NBC. Seth Meyers, host of a late-night talk show on the network, will emcee the ceremony.
In general, broadcasters continued to struggle against the onslaught of entries from across the spectrum of video, with even CBS' The Good Wife, after a widely praised season, shut out of the best drama category.
The only broadcaster with a nominee in that competitive group was PBS, with Downton Abbey.
In the comedy-series category, the broadcast networks fared slightly better, with ABC's Modern Family, which has won the Emmy in each of the last four years, and CBS' The Big Bang Theory earning nominations, along with Veep, Louie, Orange Is the New Black and Silicon Valley.
CBS led the broadcasters with 47 nominations -- dwarfed by perennial leader HBO with 99 -- followed by NBC with 46, ABC with 37 and PBS with 34.
In the acting categories, drama was again the stronghold of non-network shows, though Julianna Margulies of The Good Wife, Kerry Washington of ABC's Scandal and Michelle Dockery of Downton Abbey broke into the best actress list. Also in the group were newcomer Lizzy Caplan, widely praised for her performance in Showtime's Masters of Sex; Robin Wright of House of Cards; and the incumbent winner, Claire Danes from Homeland.
Notable omissions included Elisabeth Moss of Mad Men, Tatiana Maslany for Orphan Black, Keri Russell for FX's The Americans and Vera Farmiga for A&E's Bates Motel.
On the men's side it was all nonbroadcast contenders: Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson for True Detective, Bryan Cranston for Breaking Bad, Jeff Daniels for HBO's Newsroom, Kevin Spacey for House of Cards and one more nomination for Jon Hamm of Mad Men, who has never won this award.
Omissions included Michael Sheen of Masters of Sex, James Spader of Blacklist and Matthew Rhys of The Americans.
The strategizing that went into the gaming of categories paid off in some cases. For instance, Fargo and True Detective have the exact same format -- closed-ended series with plans for additional seasons with different casts -- but both claimed a host of nominations in separate categories -- miniseries vs. drama series -- when they could have canceled each other out had they gone head to head.
Then there is the category of outstanding guest actor in a comedy series, which now includes the stars who guest host Saturday Night Live -- including Jimmy Fallon and Louis C. K. this year. Both stars would have shown up in the list of nominees anyway, since C. K. has multiple nominations for his Louie series and Fallon is up for the first time as host of NBC's Tonight Show.
A Section on 07/11/2014