The awards show season kicked off this morning with the pre-dawn (at least in Hollywood) release of the nominees for the 2010 Golden Globes, and Fox's "Glee" picked up four nominations.
It's the most nominations for any TV show, with the Wednesday night musical dramedy competing for best comedy/musical, best comedy/musical actress and actor, and best supporting comedy/musical actress for Jane Lynch.
Fox got six nominations, the most for a broadcast network. HBO led the pack with 17.
Ricky Gervais will host the first big awards telecast of 2010 on NBC Jan. 17 -- a strong selling point for watching the Golden Globes.
Awards are issued in 25 categories. A complete list of nominees for both movies and TV shows is available at the Website of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
The major TV categories include:
Best TV drama: Nominees are HBO's "Big Love," Showtime's "Dexter," Fox's "House," AMC's "Mad Men" and HBO's "True Blood."
Best actress in a TV drama: Nominees are Glenn Close in FX's "Damages," January Jones in "Mad Men," Julianna Margulies in CBS' "The Good Wife," Anna Paquin in "True Bloo," and Kyra Sedgwick in TNT's "The Closer."
Best actor in a TV drama: Nominees are Simon Baker in CBS's "Mentalist," Michael C. Hall in "Dexter," John Hamm in "Mad Men," Hugh Laurie in "House" and Bill Paxton in "Big Love,"
Best TV comedy or musical: Nominees are NBC's "30 Rock," HBO's "Entourage," Fox's "Glee," ABC's "Modern Family" and NBC's "Office."
Best actress in a TV comedy/musical: Nominees are Toni Collette in Showtime's "United States of Tara," Courteney Cox in ABC's "Cougar Town," Edie Falco in Showtime's "Nurse Jackie," Tina Fey in Fox's "30 Rock" and Lea Michele in "Glee."
Best actor in a TV comedy/musical: Nominees are Alec Baldwin in "30 Rock," Steve Carell in "The Office," David Duchovny in Showtime's "Californication," Thomas Jane in HBO's "Hung" and Matthew Morrison in "Glee."
On TV: Sunday's season finale of Showtime's "Dexter" pulled in 2.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research numbers. That's the biggest audience ever for an original show on the premium cable channel.
- Speaking of numbers, Sunday night's Oprah Winfrey visit to the White House pulled in nearly 12 million viewers for ABC, according to Nielsen numbers.
- NBC announced its midseason schedule -- which features a Jan. 11 return for "Chuck" and a March 1 premiere for "Parenthood," based on the 1989 big-screen flick and sounding a lot like ABC's successful new comedy "Modern Family." "Friday Night Lights" isn't on the schedule, and looks likely to return in the summer. "Heroes" wraps up for the season early in February.
- The Sci Fi Channel's silly new name, Syfy, hasn't hurt the cable outlet's ratings. In fact, The Wrap reports ratings are up double digits since the name change last summer. That doesn't mean the new name isn't silly.
A brief holiday interlude: This is a good time of year to be thankful for You Tube, which has become a valuable archive for many of our Christmas TV memories.
Among my favorite bits of video there is R.O. Blechman's 1966 simple animated short for CBS.
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
