As with so many art industry awards — think the Grammys or the Academy Awards — the problem with this weekend’s Emmy Awards is that there is no longer a homogeneous audience. Back in those days when popular music was limited to a top 40 list, when movies were limited to whatever the major studios put out into theaters and video stores, and when the television dial consisted of six or seven primary channels, awards served a far greater purpose. With most of the country listening to essentially the same music, watching the same movies, and tuning in to the same television shows, awards became a focal point through which we ranked the best of the day and molded the industry, looking forward.

But as the major networks lost primetime audiences, first to cable TV and VCRs, and then later to the Internet, TiVo, and now DVD box sets, the average ratings of television’s biggest shows plummeted. Today, we are no longer a single TV audience, but an amalgamation of four, five, or six different viewing audiences, with surprisingly little overlap. And so the question, as the Emmy nominations are announced — invariably leaving none of the six audiences content — remains the same every year: What’s the point of a single award ceremony? Of a TV award that is decided in large part by a popular vote among the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, when such a popular vote seems to contradict the reality that we are now a nation of niches?

In an era of narrowcasting, does a single, definitive title of “Best Drama” even make any sense? The answer, of course, is no, because it’s impossible to come up with five — heck, even 10 or 20 — coherent nominees for best drama that will satisfy all the various constituencies. Yes, some people do indeed live for the antics (er, drama) of “Boston Legal,” one of this year’s nominees for best drama, but those are hardly the same people who tuned in weekly for “The Sopranos.” Nor are they the same ones who have found themselves hooked on “Heroes,” an audience that cares less about how their show stacks up against Tony Soprano this Sunday than they do that “Heroes” beat out “Lost” as the sole nominated serial (the other two best drama nominees being “Grey’s Anatomy” and “House”).

Which is to say that this year’s nominees don’t make a lick of sense, and could never make a lick of sense, because there’s simply too much material out there — and too many savvy viewers — to make a single Emmys award credible. Everyone has a favorite show — “The Wire,” “Deadwood,” “My Name is Earl,” “How I Met Your Mother” — that got snubbed or overlooked, many of them serials that suffered from the fact that Academy voters watch one episode, and are not required to watch an entire series. In fact, there’s a good chance that the average TV nut has seen more episodes of these series than those voting on the awards.

Yet there is a reason or two to watch this awards show, even for those disgruntled or disgusted TV aficionados who long ago gave up on any notion of a credible, or definitive, Emmys: primarily to keep a finger on the pulse of the remnants of a mainstream, as well as to witness the bizarre antics of eccentric TV personalities (such as Kathy Griffin’s odd acceptance speech at Saturday’s Creative Arts Emmys that included the not-quite-so-subtle: “Suck It, Jesus, This is My Award Now”). For example, with this year’s dismissal of “24,” we see the tide turning against a once-great show that has gone into precipitous decline. With the snubs of “The Wire” and “Deadwood,” we are reminded and dismayed to realize that the entire world cannot afford HBO, and are forced instead to watch dreck like “Boston Public.” We see through the numerous nominations for such series as “Entourage” and “The Office” (both up for best comedy, along with “30 Rock,” “Two and a Half Men” and “Ugly Betty”) that some long-deserving niche shows have finally started to attract a large enough audience from the middle. And we see through the exclusion of such shows as “Gilmore Girls” and “Lost” that some brand names have lost some of their gloss.

More than anything else this year, Sunday night’s ceremony will offer a glimpse of what the industry now thinks of “The Sopranos.” Probably the biggest TV phenomenon since “Seinfeld,” or perhaps the early seasons of “Survivor,” “American Idol,” or “24,” “The Sopranos” was an institution. And at series’ end in June, as tens of millions watched a black screen with bated breath, the ambiguous finale of “The Sopranos” outraged its fan base, who felt teased, gypped, and deceived.

The final scene of that last episode led the next day’s papers, topped that day’s evening news broadcasts, and the debate has raged on ever since: What did the ending mean, and was it a copout? Now, a few months later, the most interesting aspect of the Emmys will be how “The Sopranos” is received. The series’ final episode aired after the end of the Emmy calendar year, but before nominations were announced, so the drama of the night will be: Does the industry think as highly of the show now, after the ignominious — or is that brilliant — ending, as it did before? Surely some average “Sopranos” fans feel far differently about the show now than they did on June 1.

These are the reasons it’s worth tuning in, not to see so many undeserving nominees go on to win so many undeserved awards (the mere fact that “The Wire” was not nominated for a major award renders the whole competition moot as far as I’m concerned) so much as to see what the rest of this fragmented TV world thinks of those shows we care most about. I’m wondering if some might agree that “The Colbert Report” has been a better nightly satire over the last year than “The Daily Show,” if anyone else thinks “Top Chef” — not “American Idol” or “The Amazing Race” — is the best reality TV show out there, and if Jenna Fischer finally gets a supporting actress award for breathing life into one of TV’s greatest characters, past or present, on “The Office.”

But unlike in the past, when almost every American intimately knew and debated the top nominees, I don’t need the Emmys to rank the titles or tell me what shows are better than others. Thanks to the fast-forward button on my TiVo, all those DVD box sets floating back and forth between my friends, the various network web sites that permit one to stream shows for free, and You-Tube, where I can watch some of the best clips from shows I’ve never seen before, I’m quite confident that I am watching more television more critically than any Academy voter. And this confidence is backed up by evidence: These are the same supposed TV experts who watched entire episodes of “Deadwood,” “The Wire,” and “Friday Night Lights” and deemed such monumental entertainment unworthy of recognition.