The winners are ...

The big night is finally here, fellow TV lovers. It's Emmy time!

The new fall season kicks off Monday, but first it's time to celebrate the best from last season. The Countdown to the Emmy Awards: Red Carpet Live begins at 6 p.m. today on ABC, with the 68th Primetime Emmy Awards following at 7.

Jimmy Kimmel returns as host. With a number of A-list presenters and first-time nominees, it promises to be more of an interesting evening than usual.

It's a new year, but some things remain the same. For the 16th year, HBO again dominated the nominations with 94, down from 126 last year. Taking up the HBO slack were FX and Netflix. The former had 56 nominations (up from 38) and the latter had 54 (up from 34). Streaming service Amazon tallied 16.

As expected, Game of Thrones and American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson lead the nominees, but several first-timers, including Mr. Robot and The Americans, broke through, thanks to an easing of the voting process.

This year's awards, handed out by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, honor TV's best and brightest from June 1, 2015, to May 31, 2016. The academy has 29 peer groups that narrow the list of nominees, but all 20,000 members may nominate in the best drama and comedy categories.

Nomination ballots went out in June. Nominations were announced July 14, and final voting wrapped up Aug. 29 -- all leading to tonight's suspense.

Academy members had a slew of quality programming from which to choose. TV is still enjoying an infusion of movie stars who have ventured to the small screen (no longer seen as a a step down) because Hollywood seems to be interested only in comic book blockbusters these days. Cable has been the principal beneficiary, with broadcast networks struggling to keep up.

This year, ABC, Fox and CBS earned fewer nominations than in 2015, while NBC was flat with 41. In fact, this is the first year that Netflix eclipsed each of the broadcast networks in nominations.

With such a wealth of outstanding drama on cable, the broadcast outfits were shut out in the best drama category for the fifth consecutive year. Sorry, NCIS fans.

Still, it promises to be a stellar night. Here are the categories and my predictions on who will cart off the golden statuettes in 11 major categories

OUTSTANDING DRAMA

Nominees: The Americans; Better Call Saul; Downton Abbey; Game of Thrones; Homeland; House of Cards; Mr. Robot.

Winner: Game of Thrones. An outstanding sixth season brought 23 nominations (the most of anybody this year) spread out over acting, directing and writing. That's one fewer than last year when it won Outstanding Drama, but the series is still the front-runner.

LEAD ACTOR, DRAMA

Nominees: Kyle Chandler, Bloodline; Rami Malek, Mr. Robot; Bob Odenkirk, Better Call Saul; Matthew Rhys, The Americans; Liev Schreiber, Ray Donovan; Kevin Spacey, House of Cards.

Winner: Malek. It's his year for playing the brilliant antihero vigilante hacker Elliot Alderson. Besides, Bryan Cranston isn't nominated in this category this year, giving others a chance.

LEAD ACTRESS, DRAMA

Nominees: Claire Danes, Homeland; Viola Davis, How to Get Away With Murder; Taraji P. Henson, Empire; Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black; Keri Russell, The Americans; Robin Wright, House of Cards.

Winner: Russell. No repeat for Davis from last year. I predict Emmy will make up for ignoring The Americans for so long. Russell's Soviet spy Elizabeth Jennings is complex, human and troubled. She deserves it. Sleeper: Wright. It's her fourth nomination, maybe the academy is starting to feel guilty about its perennial bridesmaid.

Alas, Julianna Margulies (The Good Wife) and Michelle Dockery (Downton Abbey) got no mention for their final seasons.

SUPPORTING ACTOR, DRAMA

Nominees: Jonathan Banks, Better Call Saul; Peter Dinklage, Game of Thrones; Kit Harington, Game of Thrones; Michael Kelly, House of Cards; Ben Mendelsohn, Bloodline; Jon Voight, Ray Donovan.

Winner: Jon Snow. I mean, Harington. Whether Snow was really, really dead got the most TV buzz over the summer since "Who shot J.R.?" It was a brilliant season for Game of Thrones and the accolades should spill down to this category.

SUPPORTING ACTRESS, DRAMA

Nominees: Emilia Clarke, Game of Thrones; Lena Headey, Game of Thrones; Maggie Smith, Downton Abbey; Maura Tierney, The Affair; Maisie Williams, Game of Thrones; Constance Zimmer, UnREAL.

Winner: Headey. What does it say when one series captures half the nominations in a category? Clarke and Williams turned in outstanding performances, but it was Headey's cool, calculating Cersei Lannister who so ably demonstrated that revenge is a dish best served cold.

Note: Because of a delay in premiering its seventh season, Game of Thrones is out of the running for next year's Emmys.

OUTSTANDING COMEDY

Nominees: black-ish; Master of None; Modern Family; Silicon Valley; Transparent; Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt; Veep.

Winner: Veep. When you include writing, directing and acting nominations, Veep is tops with 17. That's hard to ignore. Veep won this category last year, breaking the five-year streak of the aging Modern Family.

Modern Family, however, is still nominated to the exclusion of several other deserving shows. The academy needs to get out more.

LEAD ACTOR, COMEDY

Nominees: Anthony Anderson, black-ish; Aziz Ansari, Master of None; Will Forte, The Last Man on Earth; William H. Macy, Shameless; Thomas Middleditch, Silicon Valley; Jeffrey Tambor, Transparent.

Winner: Anderson. black-ish had a strong second season and Anderson gets much of the credit. He was nominated last year when Jeffrey Tambor won for the groundbreaking Transparent and now it's Anderson's turn.

Where's Jim? Jim Parsons of The Big Bang Theory has won this category four times. I guess this year he'll just have to be satisfied with his $1-million-an-episode paycheck. Yes. That's $1 million for 22 minutes of work.

LEAD ACTRESS, COMEDY

Nominees: Ellie Kemper, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt; Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep; Laurie Metcalf, Getting On; Tracee Ellis Ross, black-ish; Amy Schumer, Inside Amy Schumer; Lily Tomlin, Grace and Frankie.

Winner: Louis-Dreyfus. The venerable Tomlin may be the sentimental favorite for all us boomers, but it just doesn't get any better than Louis-Dreyfus' Selina Meyer, especially in an election year.

And, yes, this will make five in a row for Louis-Dreyfus (she has seven Emmys total). Candice Bergen won five Emmys for the title role in Murphy Brown between 1988 and 1998, but they weren't consecutive. Kirstie Alley and Roseanne Barr squeezed in during those years.

SUPPORTING ACTOR, COMEDY

Nominees: Louie Anderson, Baskets; Andre Braugher, Brooklyn Nine-Nine; Tituss Burgess, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt; Ty Burrell, Modern Family; Tony Hale, Veep; Keegan-Michael Key, Key & Peele; Matt Walsh, Veep.

Winner: Key. He may be the dark horse, but Key is deserving. Anderson turned in the most brilliant performance as Zach Galifianakis' mother, and Hale and Walsh should split the Veep voters. That opens the door for the academy to recognize the diverse and consistently funny Key.

SUPPORTING ACTRESS, COMEDY

Nominees: Anna Chlumsky, Veep; Gaby Hoffman, Transparent; Allison Janney, Mom; Judith Light, Transparent; Kate McKinnon, Saturday Night Live; Niecy Nash, Getting On.

Winner: Janney. The seven-time (!) Emmy winner won this category the past two years. Time for a three-peat in a not particularly strong field.

For the record, Janney won four Emmys as C.J. Cregg on The West Wing, one as a guest star on Masters of Sex, and two for Mom.

LIMITED SERIES

Nominees: American Crime (ABC); Fargo (FX); Roots (History Channel); The Night Manager (AMC); American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson (FX).

Winner: The People v. O.J. Simpson. This was gripping, seminal drama that earned the series 22 nominations, only one behind Game of Thrones. The honors included nominations for all of the main cast members, as well as one for executive producer/director Ryan Murphy.

Style on 09/18/2016