• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, December 15, 2021

With legacy TV companies seeking all kinds of revenue alternatives -- streaming, sports betting operations, or even revenues from digital assets -- what remains for linear TV?

Sports programming does. But another key area are annual one-time specials, mostly live shows. Big live award shows have grown to be important pieces in a linear TV world full of declining viewership.

But TV networks have their limits: The Golden Globes is one of them.

NBC won’t be airing one of the better-rated annual awards shows. This is due to longtime diversity and other issues by the group that owns the Globes: the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

Historically, the relatively small group of journalists "didn't play by the same rules. They took gifts. They took free trips. They went on junkets paid for by the studio or the networks,” entertainment journalist Mary Murphy told NPR.

They mixed in some curried favor for these extras, like votes for Globe awards, according to sources. Welcome to Hollywood.

But then, major actors and producers started speaking up against the group, in addition to saying they weren’t going to attend the event.

All that pushed the ultimate to happen: NBC said it wasn’t going to televised the event schedule for January 2022 -- though the group will still hold its awards ceremony.

For NBC, this probably wasn’t an easy decision. But when actor/producer Tina Fey, a co-host of the 2021 live event, spoke on stage about all this, that put the kibosh on things.

She said: "There are no Black members of the Hollywood Foreign Press... “I realize, HFPA, maybe you guys didn't get the memo because your workplace is the back booth of a French McDonald's, but you gotta change that."

NBC pulls in sizable advertising revenues from the Globes show. In 2021, it took in an estimated $42.6 million in national TV advertising from the event, according to iSpot.tv.

Two years before, in 2018, Kantar says the Globes totaled in $49 million, with the average unit cost at $684,000 for a 30-second spot. By comparison, the Academy Awards were at $133 million; the Grammy Awards hit $96 million.

HFPA now says it added 21 new members — six of them African-American. Total members are now at 103, including 12 Latinos, 18 Asians, and nine from the Middle East.

Too little, too late? Maybe an occasional TV benching is good.