59th Primetime Emmy Awards

59th Primetime Emmy Awards
Promotional poster
Date	September 16, 2007 (Ceremony) September 8, 2007 (Creative Arts Awards)
Location	Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, California
Presented by	Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
Hosted by	Ryan Seacrest
Highlights
Most awards	Broken Trail Prime Suspect: The Final Act The Sopranos Tony Bennett: An American Classic (3)
Most nominations	The Sopranos (10)
Outstanding Comedy Series	30 Rock
Outstanding Drama Series	The Sopranos
Outstanding Miniseries	Broken Trail
Outstanding Reality-Competition Program	The Amazing Race
Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series	The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Website	http://www.emmys.com/
Television/radio coverage
Network	Fox
Produced by	Ken Ehrlich
Directed by	Bruce Gowers
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The 59th Primetime Emmy Awards were held on Sunday, September 16, 2007, honoring the best in U.S. prime time television programming at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. The ceremony was televised live on Fox at 8:00 p.m. EDT for the first time in high definition (on tape delay three hours later on the West Coast of the United States at 8:00 p.m.). It was also the most recent Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony to be held at the Shrine Auditorium, as it was then relocated to the Nokia Theatre from the following year (PDT/3:00 UTC). The ceremony was hosted by Ryan Seacrest.^[1]

The ceremonies were supposed to be produced by Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick, executive producers of American Idol, but because of their heavy work load with Idol, Ken Ehrlich, last year's producer, resumed the producer's role for the fourth time.^[2] Ratings plunged further down to a near an all-time low as an estimate 12.87 million, 19% lower than the past year,^[3] making it the second smallest television audience in Emmy history, behind the 1990 telecast.

The nominations were announced on July 19 at 5:40 a.m. PDT (12:40 UTC) by Jon Cryer and Kyra Sedgwick.^[4]

Meanwhile, the Creative Arts Emmy Awards ceremony, hosted by comedian-actor Carlos Mencia, were presented eight days earlier on September 9.^[5]

Freshman series 30 Rock defeated defending champion The Office to claim Outstanding Comedy Series; this was the only major award for 30 Rock.

Going into its final ceremony, The Sopranos needed just three major awards to tie the drama series record of 18 major wins set by Hill Street Blues. It was nominated in ten major categories coming in and ended the night with three wins, including its second win for Outstanding Drama Series. This tied the record and gave both shows identical résumés—18 major wins and 74 major nominations. This win for The Sopranos was also the first time any show's sixth season had won for the Outstanding Drama award, later achieved by Game of Thrones as well, another HBO drama.

AMC, a smaller cable network, won big with Broken Trail winning three Emmys. It won Best Miniseries and the network's first Acting wins, for the series' stars, Thomas Haden Church and Robert Duvall.