The Writers Strike has been a bit underground in the past month or so, since there is a normal holiday downtime for new original TV shows anyway. This week, however, it took down what might be its biggest casualty yet: The Golden Globes.
With the Screen Actors Guild boycotting the event, The Globes’ massive pointlessness ramped up past the usual level, and so NBC has reduced it from a major telecast to a um, er, press conference.
Ladies and Gents, while the Golden Globes is the first major awards show (I don’t really count the People’s Choice Awards as anything but more money for Dick Clark) that the WGA strike is going to affect, it is by no means the last.
First off, while many analysts think that this is going to get the country’s attention, I beg to differ. I think that unlike the Oscars, Emmys and Grammys, the Golden Globes are more like the People’s Choice Awards: a fun ceremony with a lot of their favorite people all together in a room. But, honestly, noone outside of the industry really gives a rats ass about the Golden Globes.
I mean, are you upset because you are now going to have to cancel your Golden Globe party? Didn’t think so.
Now, the Academy Awards, that’s a whole different ball-shaped kettle of fishwax. Lotsa folks love to gather together and deconstruct those in a large, booze-filled group. While the trope that a billion people all watch it at the same time is Hollywood-sized hype, the Oscars are a huge deal to a huge amount of people.
As I write this, those responsible for the Academy Awards are vowing that it will go on: after all, even one tenth of a billion people is a helluva lot of ad-targeting eyeballs, but the situation is obviously fluid.
But with the AMPTP and WGA not even at that table right now, how is it possible that the Oscars aren’t going to be affected? I guess that the WGA could grant it a pass or the SAG could tell the WGA to go fuck itself, but even so, an Academy Awards during an ongoing strike is going to be very uncomfortable. To say the least.
And it doesn’t end there. The 2008 Emmys will be affected as well. Even if the strike ended tomorrow, this season has been torpedoed. In a weird way, that might be a good thing: with so many shows already done and gone, The Wire and Friday Night Lights might actually get their due.
That’s a good thing, even if their current seasons don’t end up as great as the previous seasons. In the case of The Wire, of course, it would simply meant that their fifth season wasn’t as great as their fourth, which a whole lot of people have called the greatest season of any television show, ever. And those people may be right.
Nevertheless, unless they’ve totally and utterly lost their shit, The Wire is still wayyy better than any other show that will be eligible, with the exception of Mad Men, which I’m not even sure is eligible and am too lazy to figure out. And maybe people will figure out that Connie Britton and Kyle Chandler kick ass on FNL, week after week, just because there was nothing else on but crapilicious reality shows.
Maybe not though: I read somewhere that the numbers for the fifth season premiere of The Wire were actually down this week. What the fuck is wrong with you people? That’s alright, The Wire was made for the Long Tail.
I digressed. In any event, I don’t think that it strains the bounds of credulity to posit that a prolonged strike will have a ripple effect on the 2009 awards shows. After all, who knows what amazing things we would have seen this year if not for the continued intransigence of the AMPTP?
We’ll never know.