Awards News

Ratings for the Emmys have steadily declined over the last few years. Even with Ellen. And apparently, the Television Academy is concerned enough with this audience erosion to consider some new categories to spice things up and make the awards more relevant.

Through a friend of a friend of a friend who knows a guy who's married to the brother of a friend of a friend whose second cousin doesn't work in the TV Academy but heard a rumor, I've been able to procure this list of proposed new categories . In the interest of alerting the industry so you can prepare new screeners to send to me, here for the first time are the new categories for the 2008 Primetime Emmys:

Best plausible sci-fi drama

Best implausible sci-fi drama

Best series only on the air because it's owned by the network

Best series that has changed timeslots so often you don't even know it's still on the air

Best series regular who got killed this season

Best series regular you wish would be killed next season

Best variety, musical or documentary that doesn't have three pledge breaks in it

Best screener DVD from a show that never in a million years would get nominated

Best director of single-handheld-jilting-nausea-producing-camera show

Best director who can handle the Desperate Housewives

Best former sitcom ingenue who now plays someone's mother

Best actress playing the thankless best friend

Best actress who always thought television was a comedown and is now lucky to be working

Best guest appearance by an actress just out of rehab

Best actress from a series in that gray area of not really a comedy or a drama

Best performance by an actor speaking nonsensical procedural gobbledygook

Best actor who replaced the original actor who was fired for testing poorly

Best actor getting by strictly on his looks

Best series that should have won instead of 'Boston Legal'

Best made-for-tv movie originally made for theatrical release but couldn't get a distributor

Best reality show without Tom Bergeron

Best reality show where people don't bathe (includes 'American Idol')

Best canceled series

Best Tony Bennett Tribute

Best performance by Tony Shalhoub

Best half-hour comedy dick jokes writer

Special Governors Award to the Golden Globes Announcement

• Click here for the photo gallery!

Ken Levine is an Emmy-winning writer of "Cheers," "MASH," "Frasier" and "The Simpsons."