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CNN Live At Daybreak
Breaking Down the Emmy Nominations
Aired July 12, 2001 - 08:46 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Lots of talk over the morning cappuccino out on the West Coast as the nominations made for television Emmy awards. So let's get a handle on whether there were any surprises and what this all means.
Mark Schwed -- he is the national writer for "TV Guide" -- joins us very early this morning from Los Angeles. Hi, Mark.
MARK SCHWED, "TV GUIDE": Hi, Carol.
LIN: All right, so you got to see the awards live there.
SCHWED: Yes.
LIN: Any surprises for you? It sounded like the usual bunch.
SCHWED: You know, it was the usual bunch. There are a couple of things that are missing that we usually see. One is nobody from "Friends" was nominated.
LIN: Oh, yes.
SCHWED: And the show wasn't nominated, which, you know, a lot of people thought not really the best season and of course they're going into now their final season. So hopefully they'll do better next year. "NYPD Blue," without Dennis Franz, that show would have been blanked. That's very unusual. But again, not the best year for NYPD "Blue." Lots of new shows that lots of critics were hoping or more cutting edge shows that critics were hoping would make it didn't make the cut -- "Boston Public", "Ed", "Gilmore Girls," "Once and Again." If not for Marg Helgenberger, "C.S.I." would have been, come up empty and, you know, that's a really hot show and a great show. Thank goodness they gave a nomination to Mark. And Frankie Muniz over at "Malcolm in the Middle" got a little nod, too.
But other than that, we're looking at basically, you know, shows that have already won, people that have already won or been nominated before. The drama category with "ER," "Law and Order", "Practice," "Sopranos" and "West Wing," every one of those shows has won except for "The Sopranos." So hopefully this might be the big year for "The Sopranos." We keep saying that. But they had just such a fantastic season.
LIN: Yes. SCHWED: But, you know, the Emmys changed the rules to allow younger people to vote. It used to be only 1,000 out of the 10,000 members would vote and the younger members, the more busy ones, weren't voting. So they changed the rules in the hopes that it would, they would get more, you know, be more up to date, not seem so stale.
LIN: Yes, more input.
SCHWED: Hasn't worked.
LIN: All right, well, it doesn't look like a clean sweep for THE SOPRANOS this year, as it was in previous years, certainly last year.
SCHWED: No. Well, we, you know, we don't know how many total nominations they got or how many total nominations "West Wing" -- last year "West Wing" and "The Sopranos" each had 18 and "West Wing" wound up taking home nine, which was a record for a first year show.
WILL & GRACE, you know, slipped in there with a nomination for comedies and some people thought maybe some of the other more cutting edge shows, they didn't have a great year, cutting edge shows like "Titus" might make it, didn't happen, or even Dennis Leary and "The Job" on ABC. That didn't happen either.
LIN: Mark, amongst your many wonderful credentials, I understand you write a lot about reality TV. You were the first journalist to step foot on "Temptation Island" and the first...
SCHWED: And "Survivor".
LIN: Yes, lucky you.
SCHWED: Yes.
LIN: So, no category for reality TV here. Is there something I'm missing?
SCHWED: No, actually there is a category. They haven't announced all the nominations. They have, in fact, two categories for the first time ever. They just couldn't ignore the sweep of reality television so they have two categories, one for shows that, like "Survivor" that have a game show element or a prize, and one for shows like "Temptation Island" that don't. So we'll find out who got nominated as they release. You know, they're...
LIN: Well, I guess the prize is you get to stay together with your spouse. Maybe that's worthy enough.
SCHWED: You're right.
LIN: What about a show like "Fear Factor"? I mean as everybody ramps up the suspense in these reality-based TV shows, how do you judge for quality?
SCHWED: Hey, you judge the quality by just looking at it, you know? Like you judge the quality of one very different comedy from another different comedy. You know, some people, "Fear Factor" got some of the worst reviews in the history of television but the ratings are just skyrocketing so that, you know, for the folks at NBC, life is beautiful.
LIN: Yes.
SCHWED: They don't care about the reviews. In fact, the host of that show, on his Web site, just slams critics but also thanks them because he says without you hating my show so much, not as many people would have watched.
LIN: Well, Mark Schwed, what do they say in Hollywood, there's no such thing as bad publicity?
SCHWED: That's right.
LIN: Especially if you generate it yourself.
All right, thanks so much for joining us this early out there.
SCHWED: Good morning.
LIN: Enjoy your coffee.
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