January 14, 2008 - NBC's "Golden Globe Winners Special" a Real Loser

NBC, annoyed that solidarity by actors honoring the Writers Guild of America picket line ended up canceling yesterday's Golden Globes ceremony, devoted an hour of Sunday's prime time to the announcement of the winners anyway. It was an embarrassingly low-rent, inexcusable, unwatchable waste of air time.

And in that spirit, it was the first part of a bottom-of-the-barrel doubleheader. Immediately following it on the Peacock Network: another installment of the I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Cable debacle, American Gladiators. If this keeps up, and it just might, NBC should change its corporate emblem from the Peacock to the Skunk.

The hosts of yesterday's Golden Globe Winners Special (it wasn't even titled as the plural, more common Globes) were Billy Bush and Nancy O'Dell. They stood at the same podium and, for an hour, read the nominees, waited for the film clips to eat up a few seconds each, announced the winner, and briefly gave their respective two cents' worth.

Another four cents, apparently, was reserved for the set, which looked as tacky as the rest of this shallow unnecessary enterprise seemed. Once the ceremony itself was cancelled, viewers were denied the only arguable reason to tune in: to watch TV and movie stars intermingle while imbibing alcohol.

As awards of artistic merit go, these Hollywood Foreign Press Awards are about as meaningful as the Marvel Comics No-Prizes that Stan Lee used to hand out, but only in spirit, to readers. (Maybe he still does.) Take away the party, and these awards, recent additions to TV's annual schedule of specials anyway, are - and, last night, were - totally unnecessary. Post the winners on the web and be done with it.

Except, of course, that NBC didn't want to sacrifice the advertising revenue entirely, and didn't like losing in a game of chicken with the actors and writers. Get used to it, networks. And while CBS may have it easier figuring a way to present the Grammys on Feb. 10, ABC's presentation of the Academy Awards two weeks later is the next big battleground.

And that globally viewed, phenomenally popular battleground is really, really big, since ABC's projected ad revenues for the Oscars are some $110 million - nearly 10 times what NBC risked losing with the Globes. The Oscars are only six weeks away. If anything is going to prevent the strike from running into and past June, that's probably it.

Otherwise, people across the country, and the world, will have to think about draining their Oscar pools.