The 15 nominations for “Desperate Housewives” in this year’s Primetime Emmy Awards demonstrates, more than anything else, the triumph of buzz over substance – as the mediocre (and getting worse) ABC soap opera does for television viewers what “Dallas” and “Dynasty” did a generation ago: lull them into submission with soft-core sleaze.

But from a business standpoint, we must all pause and salute the executive team at ABC Entertainment, which pulled off the remarkable feat of programming two huge hit shows this past season – “Desperate Housewives” and “Lost” – that are also likely to win the Emmys for best comedy and best drama on September 18. It has been a long time since television has witnessed that rare confluence of commercial and critical success on a broadcast network: In recent years, groundbreaking (to borrow HBO’s self-serving term) shows like “Sex and the City” and “The Sopranos” have stolen the thunder from network television, causing concern among some that commercial broadcasting might be in danger. This year’s Emmy nominations may help quell those fears, at least for a few months or so.

And the immediate, soaring success of ABC’s “Lost” – the best new network drama in many seasons – suggests that there’s still a significant demand for the kind of sweeping, big-budget shows that only advertising supported television can afford to produce. The sophisticated and provocative mystery that drives “Lost” earned it 12 nominations, enough to remind network executives that its viewers yearn for the same intellectual challenges chased by programmers at places like HBO and FX. While cable shows like “Rescue Me” and “Deadwood” also got their share of nominations yesterday, I’m confident that “Lost” will win most of the major awards in September, and deservedly so. It’s the current gold standard of network television, much as “The Sopranos” defines top quality on cable.

Luck was on the networks’ side yesterday: “Sex and the City” has moved to syndication, while the we’ll-produce-more-when-we-feel-like-it “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “The Sopranos” remained on hiatus during the dates of eligibility for this year’s awards. Those three shows have been sweeping the Emmy nominations for years now, and deservedly so; unlike the lugubrious storytelling of “Desperate Housewives,” those series took pleasure in challenging audiences with smart, fast paced episodes that took viewers on challenging journeys into uncharted realms. If it weren’t for the loose rules governing the comedy category – the ones that allow “Desperate Housewives” to be considered as competition in the same category as “Everybody Loves Raymond” – critics would be more likely to note the continued scarcity of cutting-edge comedy among this year’s nominees. I seriously doubt whether any Emmy voter has ever actually laughed during an episode of NBC’s “Scrubs,” one of this year’s lucky finalists. Second-time nominee “Arrested Development” may be the critics’ darling, but frankly, it isn’t very daring, either – it’s just clever in that aren’t-we-special kind of way.

Yes, HBO did get 93 nominations – still 34 more than the second-place contender, CBS – but for what? The pay cable channel can guarantee itself those numbers for as long as it devotes itself to the development of high-profile television movies with big-name stars that appeal to Emmy voters. That’s an area of the television business that the networks have abdicated; a wonderful movie like HBO’s “Warm Springs,” starring Kenneth Branagh as Franklin Roosevelt in a moving study of his battles with polio, might once have been on NBC or CBS. But nowadays, the networks’ sweeps mentality has pushed historical figures like Roosevelt aside in favor of movies about Donald Trump and Robin Williams. “Warm Springs” might not have pulled in the numbers a network wanted, but it did earn 15 Emmy nominations yesterday. The scarcity of good network television movies enabled maudlin messes like HBO’s “Empire Falls” miniseries to pick up multiple Emmy kudos, as did the wretchedly excessive “Life and Death of Peter Sellers,” a movie only an Emmy voter could love.

In the acting categories, it was a pleasure to see some new and deserving faces in the mix, among them Terry O’Quinn as the deep-thinking John Locke in “Lost,” Hugh Laurie as the plain-spoken doctor in Fox’s “House,” and Jeremy Piven as the hard-driving agent in HBO’s “Entourage.” But as in most years, the nominations reward scenery-chewing over substance; as expected, over-the-top performances ruled the day, with nods given to Geoffrey Rush as Peter Sellers, Ed Harris as Miles Roby in “Empire Falls” (perhaps the worst performance of Mr. Harris’s distinguished career), and William H. Macy as Gigot in “The Wool Cap” on TNT. Desperate Housewives swept the women’s categories, proving that the Emmys are often less a recognition of talent than of shrewd positioning. Or should we believe that Teri Hatcher was a brilliant talent just waiting to be discovered?

Indeed, the best single performance on television this past season earned no nominations at all from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. (Where, by the way, is the science in all this?) Nowhere to be found among the acting nominees was Ricky Gervais, whose final turn as David Brent in “The Office Christmas Special” this past season was a comedy tour de force on a par with any in television history. The episode did get two nominations (one for best special, the other for best writing in a special), but to overlook Mr. Gervais’s acting is to pass over Ted Williams when mulling a list of baseball’s best hitters. If there was no category in which to have included Mr. Gervais’s brilliant reprise of his heinous character from “The Office,” then it behooves the Academy to create a new one between now and September, just for him.