By Neal Romanek, August 6, 2007
While they are yet to break into the best drama and comedy series categories, basic cable networks continue to make strides at the Emmys. Several, including AMC (18 nominations), Discovery Channel (16), USA Network (12) Comedy Central (12) and Bravo (nine), had their best showing ever this year.
Yes, the tallies pail next to HBO's 86 even in a soft year for the pay cabler and to the broadcast nets' 28-70. But with a fraction of the budgets and the viewership of the broadcast networks and HBO, basic cable has been dominating the reality series field and slowly but surely has taken over two other prestigious categories -- best variety, music or comedy series and best reality competition
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Save for some HBO series, including "Dennis Miller Live" and "Tracy Takes On ...," the best variety, music or comedy series category had been the domain of broadcast TV's late-night shows for 10 years until 2003 when Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" snapped the five-year winning streak of CBS' "Late Show With David Letterman." "Daily Show" is on a winning streak of its own with four consecutive victories. Its biggest competition this year -- its own Comedy Central spinoff "The Colbert Report."
Click here to read the entire article by Nellie Andreeva at the Hollywood Reporter.
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