Richard, Rudy, Stacey, Susan, Jenna and the rest of the castaways won't hear their names called on Emmy nomination morning. The same goes for Darva Conger and Rick Rockwell -- and Karen, Mega, Eddie and Jordan the exotic dancer from "Big Brother." How out of it are the Emmys when it comes to this newfangled reality programming? The academy is announcing the nominations on a Thursday morning, for heaven's sake. And that's the morning after, when we're busy rehashing who got voted off the island the night before! Yes, in Emmyland, time has stopped; unreality, in the form of scripted dramas and sitcoms, still rules the airwaves. It is the land of dodos and dinosaurs, "Frasier" and "3rd Rock From the Sun." The Emmys are an endangered species.

Look, I'm not saying that "Survivor" or "Big Brother" or (God help us) "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" deserve to win Emmys. It's just that their popularity is another example of a TV trend that the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences will undoubtedly fail to acknowledge -- the way it previously tried to ignore cable, Fox, animated series and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (and everything else on WB) in the hope that they would just go away.

But the academy is finally making one concession to the modern world. In response to the scathing criticism that followed last year's joke of an Emmy night (in which clear favorites like "The Sopranos," "Everybody Loves Raymond" and James Gandolfini were snubbed in favor of déjà vu winners like "The Practice," Dennis Franz and John Lithgow), the academy is trying a new voting procedure this year. Panels of volunteer judges drawn from the ranks of academy members will still choose the Emmy winners. But this year, the judging panels won't convene for two days at a Los Angeles hotel to screen tapes of nominated shows and performances. Instead, they'll be allowed to watch tapes of nominees in the privacy of their own homes.

Critics of the hotel screening procedure argued that most of the members volunteering for judging duty were retirees with time on their hands and no star hang-ups about being sequestered in a hotel for two days with a bunch of nonstars; these voters, critics contended, favored traditional broadcast network programming and well-known actors. Proponents of the home-viewing procedure (which is also how Academy Award judging is done) are hoping it will attract busier, hipper volunteers with more adventurous and informed tastes. Will all of this make a difference on Sept. 10 when the awards are handed out? Probably not: The voting change affects only the final vote, not the initial nominations, which are made by a poll of academy members who may or may not pay attention to "for your consideration" ads in the trade papers or make attempts to sample shows they're not familiar with. But it's a start.

Ironically, just as the Emmys are trying to shore up their credibility on one front, the floodgates have opened on another. The reality trend has rocked the very notion of what constitutes prime-time entertainment. Except for the brief media frenzy that accompanied the start of the second season of "The Sopranos" last January, no fictional series has elicited as much viewer excitement this year as has "Survivor" or "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" (which, as a game show, was eligible for a daytime Emmy, even though it airs in prime time -- go figure). Water-cooler discussions about make-believe stuff like who shot J.R. or how "Seinfeld" would end are but a quaint memory; they've been replaced by whispers and giggles about the "real" exploits of famous nobodies.

Those of you who can't bear another minute of this reality stuff can take comfort in this: The only way the year's hottest trend will be represented at the Emmy telecast this year is as the butt of parodies and jokes (which is how the Emmys handled the WB last year). Besides, even if "Survivor" were to earn a nomination, there's no obvious category to put it in. Yes, it might qualify for "outstanding nonfiction series," but that depends on one's interpretation of the Emmy rulebook, which defines a nonfiction series as "any program that depicts actual people and events with the primary intent to inform." Is "Survivor" informative? Well, it did teach us that we're supposed to bite the heads off live beetle larvae before eating them.

Anyway, when summer is over and viewers (especially younger ones, who have few loyalties to traditional forms of TV entertainment) have had their fling with voyeurism and freak shows, will they come back to "NYPD Blue" and "Will & Grace"? Or will the charms of episodic television pale in comparison with the contrived reality of "Survivor" and its ilk? Emmy voters have the perfect opportunity to remind viewers of the joys of storytelling, character development and professional acting by honoring TV's brightest, most original fictional fare. I'd like to believe that the academy recognizes how much is riding on this year's nominations. I'd like to believe that this is the year Emmy voters will rise above inertia and politics and truly choose the best. But if past disappointments are an indication, dinosaurs will walk the Earth again on Emmy night. And if that happens, viewers will be entirely justified in voting the Emmys off the island for good.

If I were an Emmy voter, these would be my nominees.

Now playing: Read all the recent movie reviews by Salon's critics