Most television viewers know AMC, if they know it at all, as a repository of old Hollywood movies. But the cable channel made history Thursday morning -- and startled industry observers -- when it received 16 nominations for its acclaimed drama series "Mad Men."
A stylish New York period piece about the Madison Avenue ad business during JFK-era America, complete with poodle skirts and smoke-filled offices, "Mad Men" was the most-honored of any drama series this year, a surprising achievement given that it represented AMC's first real stab at traditional series development.
It was only the latest stop in "Mad Men's" astonishing trip from a spec script hammered out by a moonlighting TV writer to cultural phenomenon, critics' darling and Golden Globe winner. A promotional campaign worth an estimated $25 million is pushing the show's return for Season 2 on July 27, including elaborate window displays at Bloomingdale's in New York and a huge "wallscape" at the Hollywood & Highland complex in Los Angeles.
Too bad, then, that about 98% of Americans have never watched the show.
In fact, whatever the interest in this acting showdown or that snub, this year's Emmy nominations may be most notable for underscoring a growing cultural trend: the yawning gap between what critics and industry veterans cherish and what the rest of the public actually watches. It's the relentless narrowing of what was once, in a pre-Internet era, a mass culture, a shift that mirrors what's happening in movies, books and other art forms.
"In terms of nominations, it is a very elite group," said Shari Anne Brill, an analyst at New York-based ad firm Carat. Referring to today's most-honored TV shows, she added: "They get an upscale audience; they just don't get a mass audience."
Scripted series, from "I Love Lucy" to "Dallas" to "Friends," traditionally netted some of the biggest audiences in television history. But now TV's comedies and dramas are, with a sprinkling of exceptions, becoming expensive diversions for the cultural elite, akin to opera in the 19th century or foreign films in the 1960s. Critics may love shows such as "Mad Men," FX's "Damages" (seven nominations) and HBO's "The Wire," but not many other Americans have caught the fever. Even popular network dramas such as ABC's "Lost" and NBC's "Heroes" have far fewer viewers than comparable series even a few years ago.
