Katherine Heigl

Credit: AP

We're only nine hours from the nomination announcement for the 61st Primetime Emmy Awards, which will be unveiled at 5:40 a.m. PT (a much more reasonable 8:40 a.m. ET) tomorrow morning.

Rather than attending the announcement live, where the only advantage is reporting on which nominees have the most publicists in the room, I'll be sitting on my couch with an IV line running directly between a main artery and my main man Mr. Coffee, preparing to analyze the nominations as they come in, or as caffeine permits. 

So check back here when you wake up tomorrow morning, when you roll out of bed well-rested and alert and peppy. Check back here and marvel at all of the typos that slip through when I attempt to write before the sun has risen over the mountains to my East. [Yes, there are mountains. Yes, I can see the sunrise over them if I happen to be awake. No, I prefer not to.]

Of course, I've already spent the past month handicapping the eight major acting categories, running down between 10 and 20 candidates for each six-person nomination field. In theory, I laid out the galleries in order of their nomination likelihood. 

Here are those eight categories and those eight galleries and the Top Six names listed (by me) in each category. Perhaps I'll come back tomorrow and see how I did. 

It's my hunch that I'm most wrong on the supporting comedy categories... I made these galleries a few weeks back and I already don't know what I was thinking...

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy: Jean Smart, Holland Taylor, Kristin Chenoweth, Tracey Ullman, Nicollette Sheridan, Elizabeth Perkins

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy: Jeremy Piven, Neil Patrick Harris, Rainn Wilson, Jon Cryer, John Krasinski, Jack McBrayer

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama: Marcia Gay Harden, Katherine Heigl, Dianne Wiest, Rachel Griffiths, Candice Bergen, Alison Pill

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama: John Mahoney, William Shatner, William Hurt, Jeremy Davies, Michael Emmerson, Justin Chambers

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy: Alec Baldwin, Steve Carell, Tony Shalhoub, Charlie Sheen, Jim Parsons, David Duchovny 

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy: Tina Fey, Toni Collette, Mary-Louise Parker, America Ferrera, Julia Louise-Dreyfus, Christina Applegate

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama: Glenn Close, Kyra Sedgwick, Holly Hunter, Mariska Hargitay, January Jones, Jally Field

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama: Jon Hamm, Hugh Laurie, Bryan Cranston, James Spader, Gabriel Byrne, Kiefer Sutherland

Check HitFix tomorrow morning (early) for all of your Emmy nomination news and information.

Daniel Fienberg
Executive Editor

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A long-time member of the TCA Board and a longer-time blogger of "American Idol," Dan Fienberg writes about TV, except for when he writes about movies or sometimes writes about the Red Sox. But never music. He would sound stupid talking about music.