What Emmy Nominated Series Have in Common

The Emmy nominations were announced two weeks ago including the six shows up for the best comedy series trophy.  The nominees include 30 Rock, Glee, Modern Family, Parks and Recreation, The Office and The Big Bang Theory.  A best series winner need not have the highest ratings, as recently demonstrated with 30 Rock’s three-peat best comedy series run.  Critical acclaim can be an indicator but seldom promises a trophy.

What, then, are the factors that make a show nomination-worthy?  Using Program Pulse we were able to identify the common strengths this year’s best comedy series nominees hold.

Emmys Choose Brains Over Beauty

Program Pulse Broadcast provides a measurement of program attributes and key elements.  Calculating an average for all broadcast comedies we looked at where this year’s nominees pull ahead.

The six nominees possess significantly higher than average scores in Clever, Intelligent and Unique.  The nominees score an average Clever score 13 points higher than average.  The broadcast comedy genre average for Unique is 39%, well below the nominee average of 52% led by everyone’s favorite sing-a-long Glee with a Unique score of 67%.

The Emmy nominees also scored 16 points higher than the broadcast comedy average in Intelligent with the theorem-dropping The Big Bang Theory getting top marks with 57%.

This year’s nominees show a growing maturity in audiences that appreciate programs that at least appear to stand out from the collective TV programming. Program Pulse is fielded monthly covering both cable and broadcast programs.  Each show is rated among 24 different attributes and 7 program elements.