‘House of Cards’ makes TV history

LOS ANGELES - Agence France-Presse

House Of Cards, starring Kevin Spacey made television history as it became the first online-only series ever to be nominated for a major Emmy award. AP photo

The Netflix political drama “House of Cards” made television history on July 18 when it became the first online-only series ever to be nominated for a major Emmy award.

The FX miniseries “American Horror Story: Asylum” meanwhile collected 17 nods, the most of any TV show, ahead of the 65th annual primetime Emmy awards ceremony in Los Angeles on September 22.
 
But “House of Cards,” starring Oscar winner Kevin Spacey as a shrewd US congressman, broke fresh Emmy ground, scoring nine nominations including best drama and, for Spacey, best actor in a drama.
 
Inspired by a BBC series from the early 1990s, “House of Cards” was made exclusively for Netflix, the online movie streaming website, which put all 13 episodes online in February in one fell swoop.
 
“We may have been the first original series that was premiered that way, but we’re certainly not the first series that’s been consumed that way,” Spacey told the New York Times after Thursday’s unveiling of nominations.
 
“If you’ve been talking to anybody over the last year or more - ‘What did you do over the weekend?’ ‘I stayed home and watched two seasons of Breaking Bad, I watched four seasons of Mad Men.’ “That just seems to be the way people are watching and enjoying lengthy, complicated plot lines and characterizations.” Other nominees for best drama mark the first time no series from a mainstream US television network has been nominated in the category.