A topsy-turvy television season disfigured by Hollywood's labor troubles took one final unpredictable turn Thursday when Emmy voters mutinied, turning their backs on network hits in favor of shows with marginal ratings or obscure cable origins.

AMC's Mad Men, FX's Damages and Showtime's Dexter became the first shows from cable networks other than HBO to be nominated for the best drama award. And the most-nominated series was NBC's ratings-challenged sitcom 30 Rock, which regularly savages network executives as stupid, whorish or both.

''This represents the changing of the guard in a lot of ways,'' Ken Ehrlich, who'll be executive producer of the Sept. 21 Emmy telecast on ABC, told reporters after the predawn announcement of the nominations in Los Angeles.

Television's old order wasn't exactly dismantled, though. HBO and the four big broadcast networks still collected 290 nominations between them, more than twice as many as all the other channels combined. And there were plenty of familiar faces among the nominees, including Tony Shalhoub (who got his sixth consecutive nomination for comic actor as the neurotic detective Monk) Mariska Hargitay (five in a row for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (whose nomination for The New Adventures of Old Christine was her 10th for comic actress).

And the veterans were anything but blasé about the nominations. ''I'm very honored,'' last year's winner for dramatic actress, Sally Field, told the Associated Press when she learned she'd been nominated again. ``It never gets old. I do, but it doesn't.''

But the absence of hit shows -- including some previously favored by Emmy voters -- was startlingly noticeable. ABC's medical drama Grey's Anatomy, which racked up nominations in the double digits the past two seasons, had just five this year and was shut out of the major acting categories as well as the best drama nomination. Another ABC hit, the mock telenovela Ugly Betty, dropped from 11 nominations to six (though star America Ferrera, last year's best comic actress, did repeat her nomination). CBS cop drama CSI, though never an Emmy magnet (32 nominations in seven years), had its least productive season ever with just two nominations.

The impact wasn't lost on the audience at the unveiling of the nominees. When cohost Kristin Chenoweth -- herself a first-time nominee for supporting comic actress on ABC's Pushing Daisies -- announced the nomination of Mad Men as best drama, the auditorium echoed with excited squeals. ''I know,'' exclaimed Chenoweth excitedly.

Mad Men, a tale of chain-smoking, martini-swilling, bed-hopping advertising executives in the early 1960s, was classic-movie-channel AMC's first attempt at a dramatic series, and it walked off with 16 nominations, the most of any drama. Perhaps even more jolting was that AMC's second drama -- the little-promoted Breaking Bad, an antiheroic drama about a high school chemistry teacher who opens a crystal meth factory -- got four nominations (including a best-actor nod to Bryan Cranston). That's just as many as ABC's ratings powerhouse and former Emmy darling Desperate Housewives.

''Just looking at the nominee list, what happened this morning seems tremendously good for television,'' Jon Hamm, nominated for best actor in Mad Men, told the Hollywood Reporter. ``All of this nontraditional programming like our show, Breaking Bad, Dexter, it's just excellent to see it recognized and rewarded.''

Another basic-cable network with a breakout year was FX, whose edgy programming -- ranging from a gross-out sitcom about eating disorders to an almost unbearably tense weekly drama about the war in Iraq -- has found favor with critics but rarely with Emmy voters. FX shows took 11 nominations, including seven for Damages, a legal thriller about corrupt corporate lawyers.

Perennial Emmy champ HBO, though competing for the first time in a decade with neither Sex and the City nor The Sopranos, once again led the field in nominations with 85 -- just one fewer than last year, when its total was swollen by 15 for the final season of The Sopranos. HBO scored heavily with docudramas: Colonial costume-drama miniseries John Adams led all shows with 23 nominations, and the hanging-chad movie Recount added 11.

But the success in the miniseries and movie categories also underscored the weakness of series development at HBO over the past several years. The only HBO series with more than a token presence at Thursday's ceremony were Entourage (five nominations) and Curb Your Enthusiasm (four), both inside-Hollywood comedies with bigger followings in the industry than among ordinary viewers. HBO's most critically acclaimed series, the gloomy cop drama The Wire, was snubbed again in its final season, receiving only a single nomination for writing.

In the single biggest nod to tradition, Emmy voters bestowed their annual nominations on the venerable NBC medical drama ER: two this time, giving the show a record 122 over its 14 seasons.

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