Preliminary morning-after numbers show Sunday night’s Emmys as the lowest-rated in people-meter history. Why? Sure, there was a football game on opposite. (Or so I’m told.) Sure, many of the nominees came from cable, which not everybody has. (Or so I’m told.) But I think many of the ratings problems were created by the Emmy show itself, which must have sent viewers bailing in a big way.

• ABC had no red carpet pre-show of its own to build excitement. Instead, the Jimmy Kimmel special, although it had its moments, was (as I called it last night) a buzz kill.
• Having the reality nominees as hosts was a bad idea badly executed. When they stood on stage proclaiming, in the opening moments, that they’d prepared nothing, it was so excruciating, I could almost hear channels changing.
• The pacing was terrible, so slow that the point of lots of segments seemed to be killing time.
• Then, toward the end, when things should have been getting good, they had run out of time and speeded everything up so people hardly had a chance to talk.

Occasionally, the Emmys were amusing, even entertaining. But I’d certainly have preferred to watch on fast-forward.