• by P.J. Bednarski  @pjbtweet, December 10, 2015

Golden Globe nominations were announced Thursday morning, and though video streamed series have been represented in awards shows for a couple years now, today’s batch of nominations in “best comedy category” are a real coming-out party.

The foreign press award nominees are “Transparent” and “Mozart in the Jungle” from Amazon Prime Video, “Orange Is the New Black” from Netflix and “Casual” from Hulu.

The only nominees from what might be called traditional TV are “Silicon Valley” and “Veep,” both from HBO, but a subscriber to HBO Now could get those online, too. Broadcast TV, and non-free cable networks, were shut out.

In the best drama category, traditional TV held its own. Only “Narcos” from Netflix was nominated. Three others --”Mr. Robot” (USA) “Outlander” (Starz) and Game of Thrones” (HBO) -- come from cable networks. ABC’s “Empire” is the only nominee in either category from a broadcast network. And along with with “Mr. Robot,” there are only two nominated shows that are punctuated now and then by commercials.

Altogether though, Netflix had eight nominations, more than any network on online competitor, but Amazon also went home with some bragging rights, too. 

By now, viewers must be used to watching awards shows that are shown on broadcast TV, but rarely receive any awards and are often the butt of easily decipherable inside jokes. (This year’s Globe telecast is Jan. 10 on NBC.)

Winning a Golden Globe or more prestigious Emmy Award, usually doesn’t translate into bigger Nielsen ratings for broadcasters. For online services like Amazon Prime Video, Netflix or Hulu, awards shows still mean business, as each  tries to build their subscriber base and create an aura of excellence, like HBO did decades ago.

Of course, every streaming convert the awards creates is potentially a future cord-cutter. 

“House of Cards” and its star protagonist Kevin Spacey were ignored in this nominating session, though the Netflix political potboiler was the first online-only series to be nominated. In some ways, "Cards" seems to have been the flag-carrier announcing Netflix’s serious-drama intentions. Spacey and co-star Robin Wright have won top prizes in their acting categories previously.

In last year’s competition, Amazon’s “Transparent” became the first streaming program to win a Golden Globe, and Jeffrey Tambor, the comedy’s star, was named best actor in that category.