Before dawn on Thursday, in the northernmost neck of Hollywood, “Scandal” star Kerry Washington and “Parks and Recreation” regular Nick Offerman will hold spellbound for four minutes a theater full of celebrity suck-up-show hosts and ambitious young industry assistants as they announce nominees for the prime-time Emmy Awards.

You can watch at home on “Good Morning America,” “Today,” “CBS This Morning” and other infotainment shows too obscure to mention.

When the two actors have finished naming this year’s contenders in the glam categories, the ambitious young industry assistants will grab the full list of nominees in more than 100 categories, dash out the auditorium door flapping the list — looking like Nancy Grace on a verdict-reading day — and contact their bosses on their mobile devices.

As news of the full list of nominees begins to filter through Hollywood, publicists with nominated clients will begin to issue the spontaneous reactions carefully crafted in advance. Those not nominated will fling themselves back on their beds — remember, it’ll still be about 6 a.m. in Dottyville on the Pacific — and tear the pillows. Excepting, of course, “Sons of Anarchy” creator Kurt Sutter, who will, as he does every year, begin tweeting obscenities about the Television Academy, which bestows the awards, and its members.

Leading up to this most welcomed and dreaded day of the year, there are many burning questions on the minds of serious students of television:

●Will any drama series be nominated that can loosen the stranglehold four-time best drama series “Mad Men” has on the hottest trophy?

●Will any comedy be nominated that stands a chance of knocking two-time best comedy “Modern Family” off its throne?

●Is there any reality competition series on the horizon that can keep “The Amazing Race” from winning a ninth time?

●Will any variety series be nominated that can end “The Daily Show’s” nine-year winning streak?

●Will anyone be nominated who can beat “Survivor” host Jeff Probst in the race for best reality series host — or, as “Dancing With the Stars” host Tom Bergeron likes to call it, the Jeff Probst Award? (Put your money on “no.” Probst has won every year since the category was created.)

●Will the academy continue to allow the shameless jumping of shows from category to category, like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag, that appears to be epidemic this year?

Emmy Awards history could be made in September, should AMC’s ’60s-set Madison Avenue show “Mad Men” win again for best drama series. It’s a foregone conclusion the show will snag another nomination Thursday in the category it’s won for four consecutive years. At four wins, it’s tied with “Hill Street Blues,” “L.A. Law” and “The West Wing” for most in that competition. Should “Mad Men” make it five, it would set a record for most wins by a drama series. (“Frasier” hit five in the best-comedy competition in 1998.)

Last year there was some hope, among those who think the Emmys are getting a tad repetitious, that Martin Scorsese’s lavish Prohibition-era drama on HBO, “Boardwalk Empire,” might take the prize from “Mad Men.” After all, “Boardwalk” already had mopped up best-drama-series wins at the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards before the Emmy ceremony. But on Emmy night the statuette went again to AMC’s orgy of product placement, deliberate pacing and verisimilitudinous touches.