Is 'American Idol' still Emmy's biggest loser?

Last year "American Idol" finally won its first Emmy, which thus, presumably, buried the threat of America's most successful TV show reigning as the biggest loser of TV's top award. The record to beat was 25 defeats held by the old "Newhart" series (1982-1990). After last year's Emmy derby, "American Idol" ended up with 28 losses, one win.

But, wait: Two arguments can be made that "Idol" is still really Emmy's biggest loser. Read on.

1. Personally, I think "Idol" producers should be forced to give back that Emmy they won last year for outstanding technical direction, camerawork, video for a miniseries, movie or a special. The victory was for last year's "Idol Gives Back" charity special, which was also permitted to compete in the series races.

This gets a bit complicated, but try and follow this. The Emmys have separate awards for TV specials and series. There was some controversy over whether "Idol Gives Back" should be defined as a stand-alone TV special because those episodes contained no element of competition, which, logically speaking, seem to be essential to qualify in the overall top category for TV reality series called outstanding reality competition program.

"Idol" producers desperately wanted "Idol Gives Back" to be defined as a regular series because they thought such high-minded TV had the best chance to win the top prize for best reality program against "Amazing Race," which won four years in a row.

Strangely, the TV academy — probably as a result of a bureaucratic snafu — ended up classifying "Idol Gives Back" as both series and special footage, which is illogical. It's either one or the other, and should've been restricted to the appropriate category classification. However, it ended up competing on both sides of the fence. I can verify that it was submitted to judges in the race for best reality program — because I saw all of those videos. And academy records clearly reveal that "Idol Gives Back" won in the tech category for specials. "Idol" also competed in the separate tech race for series (outstanding technical direction, camerawork, video), entering the Bon Jovi episode, which lost to the segment of "Saturday Night Live" featuring Alec Baldwin and Christina Aguilera.

2. If we acknowledge the difference between TV specials and series and concede that "Idol" won its solo Emmy for a special, then that means the regular, separate TV series still hasn't won an Emmy, right? However, is it still Emmy's biggest loser — in terms of numbers?