Bob Newhart didn't die. The ratings weren't disastrous. Conan O'Brien didn't bomb.

Well, except maybe in Kentucky...

The news for NBC on the morning after the 58th Annual Primetime Emmys was pretty good--provided the network didn't pick up the Lexington Herald-Leader, where the general manager of the network's Lexington, Kentucky, affiliate was quoted as saying he was "horrified" by Emmy host O'Brien's Lost-inspired plane crash opening.

Thanks to the Emmys, the station, WLEX, went straight from news of a deadly commuter plane crash at the local airport to the sight of O'Brien enduring a turbulent flight for laughs.

"By the time we began to react, it was over," WLEX's Tim Gilbert said in the Herald-Leader. "At the station, we were as horrified as they were at home."

Sunday's plane crash killed 49 people.

Explaining the joke, but not why it aired it, NBC said Monday that the O'Brien bit was meant to spoof Lost, not the "terrible tragedy" in Kentucky.

"The timing was unfortunate, and we regret any unintentional pain it may have caused," the network said in a statement.

Overall, ratings for the Emmys, airing in late August for the first time in 14 years, were about as bad or as good as might have been expected. An estimated 16.1 million people tuned in, the network said.

If the number holds up, viewership is down 14 percent from last year's CBS coverage, up 17 percent from 2004's disastrous performance on ABC and down 20 percent since the last time NBC hosted the telecast in 2002.

The annual TV fest, featuring big wins for 24 and The Office, stands to go down as the fifth least-watched Emmys on record, per stats from Nielsen Media Research.

Airing opposite the Emmys, a 7-10 p.m. offering of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl on ABC siphoned off an estimated 9.3 million viewers. The telecast, far from the run-of-the-mill rerun typically made available as award-show fodder, was seen as ABC's revenge for its top shows--Lost, Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives--being shut out of the glamour categories.

According to top TV critics, viewers who favored the eyeliner-wearing Captain Jack Sparrow over red-headed O'Brien missed a pretty good show.

The Associated Press' Frazier Moore went with a Conan the Destroyer motif, lauding the Late Night host for "land[ing] a one-two-three comedic punch before the first trophy was dispensed."

And the plane-crash bit, part of a filmed sequence wherein O'Brien, a la Billy Crystal, wandered from TV show to TV show?

"Hilarious," Moore declared.

The Los Angeles Times' Paul Brownfield, was also entertained, not offended, by the segment. The opening, he wrote, "was cute and funny," and its star was "like a much taller and more Irish Billy Crystal."

New York Times scribe Alessandra Stanley said the show, beset by calendar difficulties and controversial nominations (or, rather, controversial snubs), made the best of what little was expected of it.

"Conan O'Brien's opening monologue had some funny moments, and a few of the better series won top awards," Stanley wrote.

Other bits that won over the critical mass included the running gag involving Newhart, who was threatened with death if the show didn't end on time (which it did), and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's banter about presenter banter.

Still, by the end, wrote Brownfield in a review that was more critical of the awards themselves than the host, "I had lost total faith in the idea of an Emmy."

Sounding a similar note, Variety's Josef Adalian praised O'Brien for "a valiant, near-heroic effort," and panned Emmy voters for "largely ignor[ing]--at the beginning, anyway--the current small-screen zeitgeist in order to honor a collection of cancelled and little-seen shows."

Oh, and one more Adalian quibble: "Can somebody please tell [Simon] Cowell black tie doesn't mean showing off your chest hair?"