Kate Mara and Aaron Paul will present the 2013 Emmy Award nominations with Academy of Television Arts & Sciences chairman-CEO Bruce Rosenblum on July 18.

Mara (“House of Cards”) and Paul (“Breaking Bad”) will begin the announcement at the traditionally ungodly hour of 5:40 a.m. My thoughts on these archaic pre-dawn announcements are well established.

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Here’s what I wrote about the Oscars last year; it’s relevant to the Emmys as well:

… For all its efforts to find the perfect date for its nominations and assert its supremacy in the awards universe, AMPAS is strangely slavish to the early morning hour, a relic of an era in which news was not effectively transmitted nationally between the signoff of “The Today Show” and the nightly greeting from Dan Rather, an era when the Internet didn’t exist and hours were needed to generate the most effective stories for print.

Now, we live in a time in which “Breaking News” onscreen and online is a way of life, when dozens of channels are desperate for new material to feed the beast. Pick any moment, and all of the same outlets that set aside hours to cover the Oscars will drop what they’re doing for the noms announcement.

So amid the ongoing insecurity about maintaining the Oscars’ relevance, especially to auds below the age of 65, shouldn’t the Acad pick a moment that actually has a chance of reaching them? That would be a true Big Man on Campus move. …

Last year, Kerry Washington and Nick Offerman were tapped to present the nominations with Rosenblum, though Offerman was a last-minute cancelation thanks to travel issues. Neither star’s name was called in the nominations themselves. The last nominations presenter to get a nomination was Melissa McCarthy in 2011.