Lower than 5 years in the past, the Golden Globes had been hanging by a thread.
Within the wake of a Occasions investigation that uncovered the group’s self-dealing and moral lapses and a whole lack of Black illustration amongst its membership, NBC pulled the ceremony off the air as Netflix and Amazon Studios and greater than 100 publicity companies reduce ties with the embattled Hollywood Overseas Press Assn.
It bought so dangerous that Tom Cruise despatched again his three Golden Globes to the HFPA in protest, an act not fairly on the extent of Sean Penn’s 2022 risk to soften his Oscars, although it grabbed headlines all the identical.
However the Golden Globes have returned from the brink. The awards present, now run by Penske Media Eldridge, owned by Jay Penske and Todd Boehly, introduced its newest slate of movie and tv nominations Monday. And the protection, led by commerce publications owned by Penske, has contained little to no point out of the present’s troubled previous — or the controversies that proceed to swirl across the ceremony, which can once more air in January on CBS as a part of a five-year broadcast deal signed in 2024.
So, sure, for all intents and functions, the Golden Globes are again. However concerning moral practices, at this time’s for-profit Globes might be worse than ever, crossing the road in methods which might be extra egregious than the shady maneuverings that put the awards on life help not so way back.
As a part of the present’s rehabilitation, the Globes have expanded their voting pool to 300 folks, together with Black voters. Fifty of the unique HFPA members had been grandfathered into the group and supplied an annual wage of $75,000. The Globes terminated that coverage earlier this yr, calling the transfer “an acknowledgment that persevering with to pay members may add to a notion of bias in voting.”
It’s arduous to not be skeptical of such principled reasoning in gentle of newer occasions. In Might, the Globes introduced a brand new class for podcasts. A shortlist of 25 adopted in October, chosen by audio analytics firm Luminate, which, shock, can also be owned by Penske Media.
The eligible titles ranged from Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Skilled” and Amy Poehler’s “Good Grasp” to political packages like “Pod Save America.” Conservative commentators Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, Megyn Kelly, Ben Shapiro, Theo Von and Candace Owens all made the shortlist. (Surprisingly, “New Heights,” the favored podcast hosted by Jason Kelce and his brother Travis, the all-pro Kansas Metropolis Chiefs tight finish engaged to singer Taylor Swift, was omitted. If the objective in creating the brand new award was to discover a strategy to coax Swift into attending the ceremony, anyone forgot to save her a seat.)
However the true motivation behind the podcast class grew to become obvious quickly afterward: cash. Per the Ankler, Penske-owned commerce publication Selection had its gross sales crew pitch nominated podcasts an array of paid advertising partnerships, together with a $25,000 purchase to turn into a Podcasting FYC Fest supporting associate and a $75,000 deal for the podcaster to be given the Selection Inventive Impression Award in Podcasting.
With these costs, no marvel Luminate appears to have made reputation — and thus monetary sources — a core criterion for eligibility. Plus, there was the hope that a number of the 25 shortlisted reveals would purchase FYC advertisements in Selection and Penske’s different commerce publications, the Hollywood Reporter and Deadline, all of which depend on FYC {dollars} to maintain the lights on.
What number of bit? Shapiro is one distinguished title, shopping for advertisements on Deadline and partnering with awards prediction web site Gold Derby (sure, one other Penske property) in a paid video interview together with his podcast crew. (The stumping didn’t repay ultimately: The ultimate six nominees within the class had been “Armchair Skilled,” “Name Her Daddy,” “Good Grasp with Amy Poehler,” “The Mel Robbins Podcast,” “SmartLess” and “Up First.”)
“It’s only a cash seize,” says a veteran awards marketing consultant, who requested not be recognized with the intention to shield business relationships. “Everyone used to knock the Globes, however they had been simply goofy. … That is subsequent stage.”
You need subsequent stage? How about Penske providing three pairs of Golden Globes tickets for $70,000 every by way of a “concierge present information” in its luxurious life-style journal Robb Report? After the New York Publish reported these shenanigans, the supply disappeared on the publication’s web site.
Privately, there was pushback. Publicly, not a lot. We stay in a tradition at massive the place we’ve come to simply accept flagrant corruption because the norm, and Penske’s Globes are simply one other instance, skating by means of our collective numbness.
The Golden Globes have lengthy been excused for his or her scandals and idiosyncratic membership and, in fact, mocked for his or her irrelevance. Ricky Gervais dismissed them as “nugatory,” calling the award “a little bit of metallic that some good outdated confused journalists wished to present you in individual so they might meet you and have a selfie with you.”
The membership has turned over, however the trophy’s worth continues to be inconsequential.
But the ceremony retains on chugging alongside, remaining, within the view of filmmakers behind the form of grown-up film fare that’s turning into an more and more endangered species, a necessary advertising platform. The January ceremony introduced in 9.3 million viewers — not Sunday Night time Soccer numbers, however not shabby on this fragmented media panorama.
For one night time, the pondering goes, motion pictures like “Marty Supreme,” “Hamnet” and “Sentimental Worth” (amongst this yr’s most-rewarded contenders) are celebrated and, maybe, found. Studios nonetheless platform their movies’ enlargement into extra theaters on the weekend after the Globes ceremony. Should you award it, the pondering goes, folks will come.
All of us need these motion pictures to proceed to be made. Little doubt a good variety of moviegoers purchased a ticket to see the Brazilian political drama “I’m Nonetheless Right here” after its lead Fernanda Torres received a Globe earlier this yr.
However including classes for podcast and, two years in the past, “cinematic and field workplace achievement” solely squeezes the period of time that the present can highlight the nominated movies and their actors.
There’s a saying, first coined by Maya Angelou, that’s been repopularized in recent times: “If somebody reveals you who they’re, imagine them.” The identical may very well be stated of awards reveals.
The Golden Globes could also be right here to remain. However let’s cease pretending they’re any higher than they had been earlier than the final scandal.
