"We're flabbergasted!" roars Richard Licata, Showtime's exec VP of communications, reporting on the early results of his risky Emmy campaign.

The campaign is pioneering — it directs TV academy members to the Internet to view full seasons of "Dexter," "Californication," "Weeds," "Brotherhood" and other programs up for award consideration. (Read more about the campaign HERE.)

"More than 10,000 episodes were viewed in the first 10 days," he adds. "Do you realize what this means? In the past, when we sent academy members big, expensive boxes full of lots of DVDs, we never could measure how many episodes were actually viewed. Now we're trying a campaign method that's cheaper by tens and tens of thousands of dollars and we're getting a specific measure of what's being watched. And the numbers are huge!

"I doubt that we'll ever go back to the old way of doing Emmy campaigns. We'll continue to send some DVDs, yes, like we did this year, but not whole entire TV seasons. Last year we got 17 nominations. I can't wait to see how well we do this year!"

(Photo: Showtime)