And The Emmy For Making History Goes To . . .

English: Viola Davis at the film premiere of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows in Alice Tully Center, New York City in November 2010. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For all the talk from the Television Academy and others about how this year's Emmy Awards nominations would be more diverse than last year's, not everyone believed it would actually happen until it did.  That moment came when Viola Davis became the first African-American woman to win Best Actress in a Dramatic Series, for her role as a crime-fighting college professor in the ABC series "How to Get Away With Murder".

Two other women of color took home trophies in supporting roles:  Regina King for the limited ABC drama "American Crime", and Uzo Aduba for the comedy-turned-drama (for Emmy purposes) "Orange Is The New Black" on Netflix.

Then there was Jeffrey Tambor, a white heterosexual male who played a transgender woman on the Amazon sitcom "Transparent", winning a Best Actor in a Comedy Emmy.

And that was the diversity part of our program.  The rest of the three-hour telecast of the 67th Emmys on Fox, hosted by Andy Samberg (the first one in years not to come from a late night talk show, since Fox doesn't have one of those) of the sitcom "Brooklyn Nine-Nine", was your typical mix of lame jokes and skits, Donald Trump-bashing, acceptance speeches that ran too long, a not-so-awkward "In Memoriam" segment (this time), a salute to departing series that should have read "spoiler alert", Amy Poehler mugging it up as compensation for not winning a trophy once again, and awards presenters used as product placement for the network's shows.  Or was it Samsung, for all the Hollywood types in the audience taking selfies?

Here are the other Emmy winners, by category:

Comedy  HBO's "Veep" ended "Modern Family"'s long run as an Emmy winner for Best Comedy Series.  Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tony Hale both took home awards for female lead actor and male supporting actor, respectively.  Allison Janney won her seventh Emmy, tying her with Ed Asner and Mary Tyler Moore, with a Best Supporting Actress nod for her role on the CBS sitcom "Mom".

Limited Series or Movie  With the exception of Regina King, HBO's "Olive Kitteridge" dominated this category:  Best Show and acting awards for Frances McDormand (actress), Richard Jenkins (actor) and Bill Murray (supporting actor).

Reality Competition went to NBC's "The Voice".  If only they had this much luck in finding talent that's more memorable than celebrity judges in swinging chairs.

Variety  After saying goodbye to David Letterman and Jon Stewart plus a change of network for Stephen Colbert, "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" was sent on its way with an 11th Best Talk Show Emmy.  Amy Schumer's big year continued when her "Inside Amy Schumer" won a newly-created award for Best Sketch Series.

Drama  In "Mad Men"'s final season, Jon Hamm gets a long-overdue Best Actor Emmy for playing the iconic Don Draper all these years.  HBO's "Game of Thrones" took home the most trophies, including Best Drama and Best Supporting Actor for Peter Dinklage.

These Emmys also made history of another sort.  According to Nielsen, 11.9 million were tuned into the telecast, making it the lowest-rated in the awards show's history.  With most of the nominated shows seen on either cable or streaming services and the withering competition from NBC's "Sunday Night Football", how long can the folks who run the Television Academy convince all those cord-cutters out there that the kind of TV they hand out Emmys for is not only relevant, but worth paying for?  That's a hard sell to those who've decided they'll make do with "The Big Bang Theory" than shell out for "Game of Thrones" or "Orange Is The New Black".