By Scott Berozi

The 60th Primetime Emmy Awards took place on ABC, Sunday, September 21 in a brand new location, The Nokia Theatre. The show started with an introduction by Oprah and then the show was passed on to the not-so-capable five Masters of ceremonies: Tom Bergeron, Heidi Klum, Howie Mandel, Jeff Probst and Ryan Seacrest. They hosted the show as the five nominees of the brand new category, Best Host for a Reality Program. They stumbled through the ceremony and proved that they should probably stick their day jobs. Their 10 minute opening about “nothing” took up way too much time and caused most of the presenters and winners to be cut short. Most of their comedy fell flat and they looked as though they were not prepared for the job at hand.

Moving away from the hosts and on to the awards, this Emmys saw for the first time a basic cable win Best Drama Series. AMC’s “Mad Men,” about a 1960s advertising firmtook the top prize even though many viewers have not yet embraced the show.

Similarly, “30 Rock” on NBC, which suffers with an audience, took Best Comedy Series along with Best Actor and Actress in a Comedy for stars Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey (who won three awards in total), respectively. The show tells of what it takes to put on a variety show on a major television network. New shows did quite well overall, while Glenn Close took Best Drama Actress for her work as a hard-hitting lawyer, Patty Hewes, in FX’s “Damages” and Best Actor in a Drama went to Bryan Cranston for his freshman series AMC’s “Breaking Bad,” which depicts the life of Walt White, a high school teacher turned drug-dealer. HBO also had a good night as two of their big films this year took Best Miniseries (“John Adams”) and Best Made for Television Movie (“Recount”). “John Adams” was a seven- part series telling the life of the second President of the United States and “Recount” told about the 2000 presidential election mix-up. As mentioned, the new Reality Host award was given at the end of the night to Jeff Probst of “Survivor.”

There were some shout-outs at this year’s ceremony. Singer Josh Groban sang over 30 theme songs in a tribute to popular television series. Also, shows like “Seinfeld,” “Dragnet,” “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In” and “M*A*S*H” were celebrated throughout the night with video clips and replicas of their well-known sets.

Presenters included Lauren Conrad, Conan O’Brien, Kathy Griffin, Patrick Dempsey, Tina Fey and the cast of “Desperate Housewives.”

It makes perfect sense that since viewers are lacking for the shows that were awarded, that viewers would also care not to watch the actual ceremony. Ratings were the lowest they have ever been, only 12.2 million people watched the awards.

There was the final game at Yankee Stadium to compete with, but when all is being considered, it can be said that this year’s Emmys were a collective failure. From hosts to audience, it just did not happen as the Emmys celebrated their 60th anniversary.

Check out our website, hofstrachronicle.com, for a guide to the Emmy winning show “Mad Men.”

(nytimes.com)