Emmy Awards Handed Out Tonight

Netflix's "House of Cards" will try to make Emmy history, and so will "Scandal" star Kerry Washington.

The FX anthology series American Horror Story has the most nominations with 17  while HBO's Game of Thrones comes in at second most with 16. NBC's Saturday Night Live and HBO's Behind the Candelabra earned 15 nominations each.

The political thriller "House of Cards" could become the first online program to win best drama honors at Sunday's Emmy Awards in Los Angeles. Its stars Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright also are nominated.

Washington, the star of ABC's political soap opera "Scandal," is the first African-American nominee for best actress in a drama since Cicely Tyson in 1995 for "Sweet Justice." If Washington wins, she would be the first black actress to claim the Emmy in the category.

Michael Douglas, Matt Damon, Tina Fey, Jimmy Fallon, Jon Hamm, Bob Newhart, Bryan Cranston, Claire Danes, Emily Deschanel, Zooey Deschanel, Amy Poehler, Sofia Vergara, Kerry Washington are all scheduled to present according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Tribute Draws Controversy

There will be tributes to late TV stars including Glee's Cory Monteith, The Sopranos' James Gandolfini, Jean Stapleton of All in the Family, Family Ties producer Gary David Goldberg and comedian Jonathan Winters which is the source of controversy as Jack Klugman, who won two Emmy awards for his role as Oscar Madison in the iconic sitcom The Odd Couple.

"I think it's criminal," said Adam Klugman in an interview with The Associated Press. "My dad was at the inception of television and helped build it in the early days."

Jack Klugman won his first Emmy in 1964 for a guest starring role on The Defenders and was nominated 4 times for playing the lead role in the drama Quincy.

Larry Hagman of Dallas and Charles Durning of Evening Shade were left out of the honors segment, which will be hosted by Jane Lynch.

Emmy Awards Executive Producer Ken Ehrlich defended the selections for the personal tributes."No matter what we do, there will be people who feel we had other options and could have done other things," Ehrlich said. "In all candor, this becomes a producer's option. And in this case, we selected these five knowing certainly others could be treated this way, but these were the five we chose."

Neil Patrick Harris is host of the Emmy Awards, which airs at 8 p.m. on CBS. The opening video is said to feature Harris binge-watching every program aired last season in preparation for the show and gets an intervention from his fellow castmates from How I Met Your Mother.

The Associated Press contributed to this report