Television's biggest stars gathered in Los Angeles Sunday night, for the 58th annual Emmy awards. Hosting the awards show this year, Conan O’Brien opened the show with a short film with O’Brien in an airplane en route to Los Angeles for the show when he crashes -- landing on the mysterious island of the hit series LOST. His journey continues taking him through The Office, after which he disrupted a rescue attempt on 24. Then he arrived in the hospital of cranky Dr. House. Then the he shows up in animated form on South Park where he found Tom Cruise hiding “in the closet”, and then got busted as a suspected pedophile on a Dateline NBC investigation. We thought the filmed opener was brilliant.

This year’s Emmy awards saw the introduction of a new voting system behind-the-scenes. The new objective behind the controversial voting was to shake-up an institution often accused of voting out of habit more than actual merit. The biggest surprise with this year’s nominees was that a lot of acclaimed but very popular shows like Grey's Anatomy, Lost, CSI, Desperate Housewives and House were completely ignored. NBC, the network considered to be in the biggest slump creative wise by many pundits, actually won as much as the other three free-to-air networks combined.

The first award of the night went to Megan Mullally, for best supporting actress in a comedy, for the now departed Will & Grace. Jeremy Piven took home the best supporting actor award for his role as a smart-ass cocky Hollywood agent in the HBO series Entourage. A couple of Hollywood veterans won the supporting awards in the drama category, including Blythe Danner for Huff and Alan Alda for The West Wing. Jon Stewart fans had reason to celebrate as The Daily Show grabbed its fourth Emmy as outstanding variety, music or comedy series. Tony Shalhoub won his third Emmy as best actor in a comedy for his role as the germ-phobic detective in Monk.

HBO won the night with nine nods, most for its acclaimed Helen Mirren led mini-series Elizabeth I, followed by NBC with six, FOX with three, CBS and Comedy Central with two and ABC with one. Despite not landing major awards, shows like Rome, Baghdad ER and My Name is Earl won for technical merits. The real notable winner for the night was 24. In its fifth year the action thriller series received its best critical notices and ratings ever, and that paid off with the most nominations of any series and a win of the two big awards - Best Drama Series and Best Actor for Kiefer Sutherland.

The most emotion segment paid tribute to Aaron Spelling, recognized as TV’s most prolific and longest-reigning mogul, who died in June at 83. All three of the original “Charlie’s Angels” — Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith — put aside a longtime feud to stand together on-stage and recall their memories of the man that “changed their lives forever.” Dick Clark, the 76-year-old “oldest living teenager,” was saluted as a TV pioneer and a show-biz original. In that familiar voice slurred somewhat by his 2004 stroke, he offered a gracious thanks, then introduced Barry Manilow, who sang the by-now-classic “American Bandstand” theme.