• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, January 10, 2023

The Golden Globe Awards are back, but not by popular demand.

When we last saw the Golden Globes in 2021, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association that oversees them had become embroiled in scandal as deficiencies that were known by almost everybody for decades suddenly became important.

First and foremost, the HFPA’s all-white membership (all 87 of them) was called into question for its lack of diversity.

Also called into question (though it has been an open secret for years): The membership’s long-standing tradition of accepting lavish gifts, meals and other perks from Hollywood studios and publicists allegedly with the intent of influencing the nomination process.

When these issues exploded into the public consciousness in the winter and spring of 2021, NBC thought it would be prudent from a public relations standpoint to express its indignation and step away from its partnership with the HFPA until these issues could be addressed.

Back then, the TV Blog ventured the opinion that NBC may also have decided to bail on the Globes because the ratings for the 2021 telecast had just fallen off a cliff.

The three-hour show on Feb. 28, 2021, hosted by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, drew a paltry audience of just 6.91 million. A year earlier in 2020, the show had 18.32 million viewers. For those who love percentages, that was a 62% decline.

But the Golden Globes are back on NBC this year -- Tuesday night at 8 p.m. Eastern -- because the network and the rest of the movie and TV world have all apparently accepted the HFPA’s assertions that the issues of corruption, transparency and diversity have been addressed.

Whether or not this is true is not the concern of a blog about TV. Instead, it is the disappearing audience that continues to rivet the TV Blog’s attention.

As noted a number of times here, audiences for all of the major televised awards show -- Oscars, Grammys and Emmys -- have been waning for a number of years now.

Where the Golden Globes are concerned, it is doubtful the ratings decline in 2021 had anything to do with the HFPA’s diversity issues.

Cliché alert: Not to beat a dead horse or sound like a broken record, but few movies and TV shows today attract what used to be known as mass audiences (with some exceptions). The same goes for the awards shows.

Or, to put it bluntly, people don’t care as much as they used to about who or what wins awards. And then there is the haranguing and lecturing about social issues from the awards’ show podiums that is a turnoff to many.

It hardly seems likely that the Golden Globes will do much better than the 6.91 million viewers it drew two years ago, and possibly worse.