Posted: Tue., Jul. 15, 2008, 9:02am PT

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PBS racks up Emmy nominations

Public broadcaster nabs 38 nods

'Frontline'
In the 'Frontline' seg 'On Our Watch,' a displaced Chadian mother waits to be seen at the Medecinas Sans Frontier hospital in Habile, Chad.

Public broadcasting emerged a clear front-runner among the nominees for the 29th annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards, announced Tuesday by the Natl. Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in New York.

With 38 mentions, PBS drew more than double the tallies of its nearest competitors -- ABC and CBS, both tied with 17. NBC was next with 14.

The cable news channel with the most noms was CNN with five ("Anderson Cooper 360" accounted for two of those), but it placed behind National Geographic Channel, HBO/Cinemax and History (12, 10 and six, respectively) among cablers.

Special longform programs, newsmags and such stalwarts as "Frontline" and "P.O.V." helped PBS nab a good portion of its noms. For instance, of the five nominations in the continuing coverage of a news story -- longform category, three went to separate editions of "P.O.V." and one to an edition of "Frontline"; and CNN received the remaining one.

For the broadcast nets, the evening news broadcasts nabbed the most attention. In the category coverage of a breaking news story in a regularly scheduled newscast, ABC's "World News" drew two mentions, while CBS' "Evening News" and NBC's "Nightly News" each garnered one.

A related category, continuing coverage of a news story in a regularly scheduled newscast, was extremely competitive, totaling seven Emmy noms -- three each for ABC and NBC, one for CBS.

Other network news programming also received noms. CBS' "Sunday Morning" and NBC's "Today" were nominated for feature coverage in a regularly scheduled newscast. CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" picked up one of its two noms in that same category.

"Anderson Cooper 360" received is second nom in the investigative news category. NBC "Nightly News" received two noms in that category, while ABC "World News" and CBS "Evening News" pulled down one each.

In the newsmagazine categories, CBS' "60 Minutes" netted four separate noms, and ABC's "20/20" drew six. "60 Minutes" also received noms for interviews and for science, technology and nature programming. "Now on PBS" received one in the newsmag category, as did "Dan Rather Reports" on HDNet and "Aqui y Ahora" on Univision. HDNet partnered with PBS' "The News Hour With Jim Lehrer," and two of the co-ventures drew noms in the newsmag category.

(PBS is claiming that the TV Academy mistakenly failed to recognize one of those co-ventures, so the pubcaster's total noms should be 39, not 38.)

Winners will be announced Sept. 22, when the News and Documentary Emmy Awards will be handed out at Lincoln Center.