Tom Maurstad

The 60th annual Primetime Emmy Awards show gave out a lot of prizes on Sunday night, but one was overlooked. That would be the one the broadcast won for Worst Awards Show. Ever.

It's a stunning achievement, given the history of spectacularly terrible award shows, but from the first moment, Sunday night's Emmys made it obvious that the show would win hands down (as in never raising them to applaud) and going away (even though it seemed like it never would). Never has an awards show seemed so long and yet ended exactly on time.

That at-the-stroke-of-10 moment occurred with the announcement of AMC's Mad Men for best drama series, topping an evening in which cable arrived as the new power player in the television game.

Though there were exceptions – most prominently, 30 Rock's domination in the comedy categories, with Tina Fey winning for writing and acting and the show winning for comedy series – it was cable shows that won Emmys in the major categories. Leading the charge was Glenn Close, who won the best-actress award for her role as a toxic lawyer in FX's Damages.

A couple of sign-of-the-times awards: In the drama category for supporting actress, where four out of the five nominees were from broadcast series, the lone cable nominee – Dianne Wiest for HBO's In Treatment –took the prize. And to drive home the point of cable's dominance in this year's Emmys, Bryan Cranston was the surprise, but richly deserving winner for his lead role as a high-school chemistry teacher with terminal cancer who starts a meth lab in AMC's drama Breaking Bad.

MARK J. TERRILL/The Associated Press

Laura Linney accepts the award for outstanding lead actress in a miniseries or a movie for her work on John Adams , which won eight Emmys overall. Co-star Paul Giamatti also won for his role as President Adams.

But only because he beat out the expected winner, Jon Hamm, who was nominated for his role in the night's Big Show winner, Mad Men.

Given this year's presidential campaigns, the night's other theme was predictable: politics. Again and again, celebrities made references to the race for the White House, whether they were winners giving speeches or presenters making small talk. It seemed as if there had been some sort of pre-show agreement to keep names and specifics out of any on-air comments, but implicit has rarely come off so explicitly.

Just a few minutes into the show, as the broadcast's five reality-TV hosts foundered on stage, bringing the show to a screeching halt before it had even gotten rolling, Howie Mandel quipped, "We are like on Sarah Palin's bridge to nowhere."

Later it was Tommy Smothers, accepting a commemorative Emmy for his writing on the controversial Smothers Brothers Show, who didn't name any names but talked long and intensely about there being "nothing more scary than watching ignorance in action" and the universal importance of truth.

Laura Linney, accepting the lead actress award for her performance as Abigail Adams in HBO's miniseries John Adams, thanked "the community organizers who founded this country." That was a subtle dig compared with Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart's routine. As the two Comedy Central late-night hosts ostensibly presented an award, Mr. Colbert started eating prunes. When Mr. Stewart questioned him, Mr. Colbert said he didn't want "a young, sexy plum," before adding "this dried-up old prune has the experience." And so on. Never a name or a party mentioned, but you got the idea.

It's too bad people involved in the broadcast didn't spend as much time thinking about how to stage an entertaining show. It's also funny, in a sadly ironic way, that the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences would prove itself to be so clueless about how to make good television.

Comedy Central stars Stephen Colbert (left) and Jon Stewart clowned around while presenting an award at the 60th annual Emmys.

Every bit the Emmy production tried, every skit or scene it staged fell flat and was just dreadful. Opening a three-hour show with a bunch of people talking endlessly about nothing – first Oprah and then those five hosts – is like starting a cross-country car trip by slashing the tires. There was the evening's theme – TV "as a place you come home to" – that involved unveiling a series of iconic sets all night, from the diner in Seinfeld to The Simpsons' living room to a tent from M*A*S*H . Each one looked rinky-dink and amateurish, like something out of a high-school production, not a television showcase watched by millions. It was so bad even the celebrities started taking pot-shots – Jeremy Piven mocking that interminable opening, Don Rickles ridiculing the laughless jokes written on the cue cards.

Never has such an exciting time with so many rewarding shows been celebrated by such awful television.