Awards shows don't change much from year to year -- the ritual is part of the appeal. But the television academy made a couple of changes this year that have attracted some attention, and the tiny number of nominees in one of its most prestigious categories has raised the question of whether it should have made one additional change. Let's look at these one at a time:

Expanding the number of nominees: The best comedy series and best drama series battles are a bit more crowded this time around, as the number of nominations in both categories has been increased to seven. The number of acting nominees, both lead and supporting, has been bumped from five to six. One assumes that part of the reason for the higher number of nominees was to increase the sheer number of stars who would feel the need to show up, and likewise, increase the number of fans of those stars who will feel compelled to watch.

The same reasoning was behind the recent decision of the motion picture academy to increase the number of best picture nominees from five to ten. This attracted a good deal of commentary, and criticism that the Oscars were being dumbed down, but there has been little outcry about the Emmys doing something similar. However, there is a significant difference between film and television: the number of movies being made hasn't changed much over the years, but the universe of television is expanding at warp speed. Look at the best drama category: two nominations for AMC (Breaking Bad and Mad Men), a channel that had no original series programming as recently as three years ago. Expansion of the nominations in these key categories is a recognition that the television landscape has become vast and varied.

Neil Patrick Harris as host: Are the Tonys becoming the new testing ground for more prominent awards shows? First Hugh Jackman graduated to the Academy Awards, and now Barney Stinson goes from the Tony gig to the Emmys in a few short weeks. I generally don't get too excited about awards show hosts one way or the other, but Harris seems to be an inspired choice, and he might even be able to turn this into something like a permanent gig.

The Emmys have a higher profile than the Tonys, but are nowhere near the Oscars in prestige or pressure. Harris is a likable presence and a good ad-libber, and even brings with him the aura of hipness -- odd considering he's been around for twenty years and got his start in that most un-hip of shows, Doogie Howser, M.D. And CBS gets to highlight one of its own stars for three hours, which is especially valuable since Harris is the favorite to win best supporting actor in a comedy, and CBS is unlikely to see its name called very often during its Emmy broadcast outside the automatic win for The Amazing Race.

Time to kill the miniseries category?: The old-fashioned Thorn Birds-like miniseries has been dead on network television for a long while (unless you count something like Harper's Island, which had its thirteen-week run and was always conceived as a one-shot deal). The two places where you still find them on a semi-regular basis are HBO and PBS, which explains the two (and only two) nominees this year in the Outstanding Miniseries category: Generation Kill and Little Dorrit, which ran as part of Masterpiece Theatre. This hardly qualifies as a competition.

There have not been five nominees in this category since 2004, which leads to the question of whether this particular Emmy, honoring an art form on life support, should go the way of the "Best Western" award that was part of the show 50 years ago. A simple solution would be to fold it in part into the movie category (this could work for any miniseries that is essentially two two-hour movies) or into the series category (allowing the seven-episode Generation Kill to compete along with the other dramas). This would not be welcome news for HBO, which has dominated the miniseries award for years (recall last year's John Adams Emmy orgy). Perhaps the academy can hold off for one more year and allow The Pacific, HBO's long-awaited companion piece to Band of Brothers, to clean up next year, and then re-examine matters if it still looks like they are going to have a hard time filling five nominations in coming years.

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