Golden Globes: Off the Air
Hollywood's party of the year stands to be cancelled by the NBC Network for 2022 after massive backlash from A-List Celebrities and Major Studio Houses.
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Hi Everyone,
Yesterday, Tom Cruise announced that he would be returning back all 3 of his Golden Globe Awards for his films Jerry Maguire, Born on the Fourth of July, and Magnolia.
The reason?
The move is a part of a bigger backlash against the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a body of 87 journalists who vote on the various nominations and awards given out at the show.
For years, there have been complaints of a lack of transparency in the voting mechanism of the Golden Globes, and while the award show in itself is billed as a huge party, with it being held just a few weeks before the Oscars, and traditionally having a good success rate of predicting the Oscar winners, this time around, people seemed to have had enough.
You might know the infamous speech that British comedian Ricky Gervais gave when hosting the Golden Globes last year, which went viral as he roasted practically everyone at the award show, including the Hollywood Foreign Press, ironically for its lack of diversity. It is honestly one of the funniest award show speeches ever, check it out here 👇🏻
The HFPA had been struggling to contain a mounting crisis since the publication of a Times investigation that shed light on a range of alleged ethical and financial improprieties and revealed that the organization has no Black members.
The controversy over the HFPA’s lack of Black members overshadowed this year’s Globes, which saw its ratings plummet to an all-time low, dropping more than 60% from the 2020 telecast, a collapse in viewership that further eroded the position of the HFPA. The group reportedly gave NBC a roughly $20-million rebate to alleviate the loss.
Right from celebrities such as Scarlet Johansson, Tom Cruise, and Mark Ruffalo, to the biggest studios like Netflix, Amazon, and Warner Media, have decided to cut ties with the Golden Globes and the Hollywood Foreign Press, until they make meaningful changes to promote diversity in their tight-knit group.
Fighting to safeguard the Globes and their very existence, the HFPA announced a series of sweeping reforms last week, including increasing its historically insular membership ranks by 50% over the next 18 months, with a focus on recruiting Black members.
After two months of publicly backing the HFPA in an effort to preserve the viability of a show it has aired since 1996, the NBC network ultimately concluded that the situation could not be defended.
In a press release, they announced that they would not be airing the award show in 2022, in what was the biggest blow to the HFPA yet.
“We continue to believe that the HFPA is committed to meaningful reform,” the network said in a statement. “However, change of this magnitude takes time and work, and we feel strongly that the HFPA needs time to do it right. As such, NBC will not air the 2022 Golden Globes. Assuming the organization executes on its plan, we are hopeful we will be in a position to air the show in January 2023.”
Our take on this?
This is yet another blow to the credibility of Award shows, something that we have written on in previous editions of our Newsletters. With big names such as the Grammy’s and the Oscars coming under fire, consumer demand for such pompous award shows has been at an all-time low, evident from the plummeting ratings and viewership numbers.
Whether or not the Golden Globes return in 2023 is insignificant, this trend is yet another affirmation of the lack of trust that people have in centralized authorities and legacy institutions, not just in Hollywood, but around the world.
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