The American Film Institute (AFI) has announced nominations for its first ever awards event. The show will be broadcast live from the Beverly Hills Hotel on 5 January on the CBS Television Network. Two 13-member committees - one representing motion pictures and one representing television selected the nominations. 

Television awards will be presented in the categories of comedy series, drama series, movies and mini-series. One of the nominees, The West Wing's Allison Janney, will also present. The HBO network bagged several nominations. In the comedy series category it's Curb Your Enthusiasm and Sex and the City with Sarah Jessica Parker go up against CBS's Everybody Loves Raymond and Fox's Malcolm in the Middle.

HBO also dominates the movie or miniseries category with Band of Brothers, Boycott which deals with Martin Luther King and Conspiracy with Kenneth Branagh as SS General Reinhard Heydrich getting in. The lone outsider is ABC's Anne Frank.

HBO's Six Feet Under and The Sopranos got nominated for best drama series along with NBC's The West Wing. In the past the above mentioned series have won Golden Globes as well as SAG.

For best actress in a movie or miniseries ABC takes the honours with three nominations. Among them is Judy Davis (Husbands and Wives) for playing Judy Garland in Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows.

Some movies competing for the film of the year are the animated Shrek, the Russell Crowe starrer A Beautiful Mind, the war epic Black Hawk Down from director Ridley Scott (Gladiator), Fox's musical Moulin Rouge and Peter Jackson's spectacular The Fellowship Of The Ring.