• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, January 3, 2024

ABC and CBS are hoping two specials this week will emerge as “Golden” greats.

At first glance, “The Golden Wedding” on ABC might attract more viewership and buzz than the week’s other “Golden” entry, “The 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards” on CBS.

Viewers will either laugh or cry at “The Golden Wedding,” scheduled to air live on Thursday from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern on ABC.

The venue is reported to be the La Quinta Resort & Club in La Quinta, California, but this factoid is unconfirmed.

This wedding special results from last fall’s “Golden Bachelor” on ABC in which bachelor/widower Gerry Turner, 72, chose a bride from 22 eligible single women of a certain age.

His choice was Theresa Nist, 70, who accepted Gerry’s proposal on the “Golden Bachelor” finale on November 30 (seen in the photo above).

That finale episode drew total viewership of 6.95 million, according to national, live+3-day numbers provided by ABC. The show got a 0.95 rating in Adults 18-49, ABC said.

Meanwhile, CBS will air “The Golden Globes” live this Sunday for three hours -- from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern. It will be the first “Globes” show seen on CBS since 1982.

Hosted this year by comedian Jo Koy, there seems to be little buzz around this year’s awards. 

Indeed, this annual awards show fell off a ratings cliff in 2021, drawing total viewership of 6.91 million. Just a year earlier, in 2020, the audience was 18.32 million. Last year, the 2022 show fell to 6.3 million.

Before this year, NBC had “The Golden Globes” every year since 1996. The network either jettisoned the show outright last year or, reportedly, did not come to a rights agreement with the show’s new owner, Dick Clark Productions.

Last spring, DCP bought the awards show’s "assets and intellectual property" (says Wikipedia) from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which was then disbanded.

Under the auspices of the HFPA, the Golden Globes over the years developed a reputation as somewhat of a sham, with revelations that the HFPA’s membership received all kinds of perks and favors from Hollywood studios and producers to influence their votes.

The HFPA was said to be a non-profit organization. But now, under its new ownership, the property is now for-profit. It remains unclear who exactly voted for this year’s nominations, which were announced December 11.

As for ABC’s live wedding, the TV Blog wishes ABC’s golden couple well, although some other previously televised weddings did not exactly turn out well.

These included the live wedding of Diana Spencer and Prince Charles on July 29, 1981; the live wedding of Rick Rockwell and Darva Conger at the conclusion of the two-hour Fox special “Who Wants To Marry a Multi-Millionaire?” on February 15, 2000; and the wedding of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries, which took up several episodes of "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" in mid-October 2011.

Everyone knows what happened to the marriage of Di and Charles, but the other two marriages collapsed even faster.

The Rockwell-Conger marriage was acrimoniously annulled in April 2000, just two months after the “Multi-Millionaire” show aired.

The actual Kardashian-Humphries wedding had been held on August 20, 2011, a few weeks earlier than its telecast on E!. But the marriage was short-lived. On October 31, 2011, Kim filed for a divorce.