Five Emmy Myths: Fact or Fiction - Exposed!

Every year the Emmy nominations produce wild conspiracy theories about orchestrated snubs and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences' hostility to one program or genre.

This makes the academy look far more organized than it actually is.

Nevertheless, even some top players in the creative community have assailed Emmy choices in the past, with "Sons of Anarchy" creator Kurt Sutter unleashing an epic Twitter rant last year about academy members being "too old to understand my show." (They didn't understand it any better this year, apparently.)

So for those with inquiring minds, here are five questions that frequently come up about the Emmys, dissected and exposed (take that, Mythbusters):

Do the Emmys favor cable over broadcast? Cable has some inherent advantages, particularly on the drama side, where doing heavily serialized, shorter-order series tend to play better -- and feel more satisfying -- than broadcast fare, particularly procedurals. Notably, sitcoms are a little different -- many are self-contained, and funny is funny -- which has of late tended to even the playing field.

Do the Emmys discriminate against sci-fi and fantasy? To a point, yes. Series like "Game of Thrones" have been able to break into the list of nominees -- and Peter Dinklage, happily, scored a well-deserved trophy last year -- but it is difficult for them to amass enough of a following within the academy to convert nominations into wins. And it is true that concepts like "The Walking Dead," "Battlestar Galactica" and anything else that people dress up as at Comic-Con are probably a tough sell.

Are Emmy voters overly impressed with movie stars? Sadly, yes. If history is any judge, projects with big movie stars perform disproportionately well in the Emmy balloting, almost without regard to merit. On the plus side, they do tend to class up the joint and clean up nicely.

Are academy members too old to recognize hot new series? Sorry, I'm having trouble hearing you. Can you SPEAK UP A LITTLE PLEASE?

Do lavish Emmy campaigns skew the voting? Absolutely. So keep buying those "For your consideration" ads. My kid's feet aren't going to shoe themselves.