Commentary
Not Quite Enough Awards For TV Programming
- by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, March 5, 2010
The Emmys, Golden Globes, and a host of other network-centric awards programs -- ESPN, TV Land, MTV and others -- honor the best in TV, either exclusively or as part a broader effort to honor other entertainment content as well.
But apparently this isn't enough. The Paley Center for Media wants to create another awards show. There's money to be made.
At the top level, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences can pull in $65 million from a single night of TV from the fees it gets from ABC to air the Oscar show. That's essentially AMPAS' operating budget for the entire year.
Money is only one reason for Paley to enter the fray. Few are saying it out loud, but there seems to be a growing number of executives pissed off at how the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences runs its own show, the Emmys.
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The Emmys surely need another makeover -- especially when multiple winners in a single category grab ever more trophies. Boring. Or when HBO grabs a truckload of hardware for programming few viewers have seen. More boring.
TV awards shows can make lots of money for networks themselves. Two of MTV's biggest nights of the year come from its MTV Movie Awards and Video Music Awards.
For many TV marketers, these two events are a necessary lynchpin for bigger advertising deals with MTV. Media executives say they are like "mini-upfront" deals with the network.
Paley, of course, has its own strategy to get more spin for its brand, perhaps as an alternative to ATAS.
Finally, supporters of another TV awards show will tell you it's about better marketing for the TV industry as a whole, to give those hard-working executives their due -- along with some shiny metal to put on their shelves.
Do we need another awards show? No way. But do we need a better TV awards show? I'm all for that.
Wayne Friedman is West Coast Editor of MediaPost. You can reach Wayne at wayne@mediapost.com.
I agree. The old broadcast networks should be content to be marginalized, just they have become. I don't have HBO or Showtime, so I also sense the boredom with seeing their shows win, but it's just a reminder of how out-of-step the once magnificent prime-time enterprise has devolved. You can thank Bob Wright and other bean-counters for the change. Also a fair share of the blame goes to the increasingly coarse nature of public life, where broadcast/FCC standards are no longer aligned with the words and images that viewers deem acceptable.