Tonight was the 65th Annual Golden Glove Awards, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. With the writers' strike still a factor, the posh ceremony with stars, gowns and long acceptance speeches was cut to a simple hour-long press conference in which the winners in all categories were announced.

People who watched NBC saw Access Hollywood's Billy Bush and Nancy O'Dell read off the nominees, announce the winners, then do a couple seconds of commentary on the winner. For all those who complain about long, boring awards shows with countless filler, this was heaven.  On the TV side, the big winners were AMC's critical darling about the advertising agency in the 1960s Mad Men and many other cable shows.

For Drama, Mad Men, which topped many top 10 lists won awards for Best Drama Series and Lead Actor for Jon Hamm. This big win may help catapult the show to Emmy success. The Lead Actress award went to Glenn Close for Damages, yet another new show this year. Clearly, the Golden Globes didn't feel any sympathy for the old guard, and it's refreshing to see smaller cable networks like AMC and FX triumph over the major broadcast networks and HBO, the cable giant.

For Comedy, things were just as mixed. The HBO series Extras won Best Comedy Series, mirroring the surprise victory of Ricky Gervais' other show, The Office, which won the award in 2004. For Lead Actor, David Duchovney defeated a group of heavy hitters for the small Showtime series Californication. This puts him in a rare field of actors to cross genres, as he won the Best Lead Actor in a Drama award in 1997 for The X-Files. The Lead Actress prize went to Tina Fey, the creator/writer/producer/star of 30 Rock. This is the only TV Golden Globe award that went to a major network.

In the supporting races, Jeremy Piven won for Entourage, yet another award for his mantle. He already has two Emmys for his work as uber-agent Ari Gold, but this is his first Golden Globe win in four nominations. For supporting actress, the winner was Samantha Morton for the HBO TV movie Longford. The Golden Globes are odd in that they combine TV movies and miniseries, dramas and comedies in the supporting races, so Morton defeated Emmy winners Jaime Pressly from My Name is Earl and Katherine Heigl from Grey's Anatoy,

The Golden Globes typically go to new shows, but the twist this year was the dominance of cable networks. Popular shows like Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty thrived in past years, but now FX, HBO, Showtime and AMC are the big winners. Perhaps this is a sign that the Emmys will continue to recognize the small networks.

-John Kubicek, BuddyTV Senior Writer
(Image courtesy of NBC)