Does Grammy Revival, Netflix-SAG Deal Suggest A Future For Struggling Awards Shows?

One of the side bets in watching the streaming wars is what happens to various pieces of legacy TV as viewership deflates. Are soaps still something? What about live news and sports? Whither, if anywhere, late night shows (After James Corden departs, we should refer to his TV gig as the late Late, Late Show; CBS is replacing the 28-year-old fixture with a rebooted game show)?

And then there are the many awards shows that have been salted into the broadcast calendar over the past few decades. Long a sure-fire driver of audience attention, especially during ratings sweeps months, now the future of most of them on legacy platforms seems dicey at best as audiences continue to erode at a rapid pace.

Despite the declines, the Grammys and Oscars have remained two of the few programs to consistently break through the wall of football games clogging the annual list of most-watched shows on traditional TV. Nothing’s close to touching the Super Bowl’s 100 million or so households each year, nor will the award shows come close compared to this weekend’s Big Game, but at least they remain on the most-watched lists that advertisers and others covet.

And partway through this year’s awards season, we’re seeing a few green shoots of promise about where at least some awards shows might go in a streaming era. Those green shoots could flower into new audiences, or at least more targeted viewers less likely to be offended by self-absorbed celebrities earnestly touting their latest causes.

With nearly all streaming platforms now offering an ad-supported tier, hosting awards shows could be a way to goose both ad revenue and broader attention to their other programming.

Certainly, Netflix is betting on that with its new deal to take over the SAG Awards next year. This year’s awards streamed on Netflix’s YouTube channel, and will come full-time to Netflix next year, the company announced last month.

For Netflix, taking over an influential but second-tier show like the SAG Awards presents a few opportunities. One benefit, of course, is the chance for more high-profile, relatively low-cost, pre-marketed programming. It’s another chance for Netflix to invest in its nascent live-programming initiative, for far less than a live sports deal.

Importantly, the SAG Awards recognize both film and TV projects, so Netflix can cross-promote all of its many kinds of programming. Not incidentally, streaming the awards becomes a way to connect with parent organization SAG-AFTRA, Hollywood’s biggest union by far with more than 160,000 members. Actors also comprise the biggest branch of Oscar voters in the Motion Picture Academy.

But Netflix’s initiative isn’t the only one suggesting there may be streaming lives ahead for broadcast-born awards shows.

Last weekend, CBS grabbed the best ratings for the Grammys since before the pandemic hit, topping 12.4 million total viewers on Sunday night, according to Nielsen, up 30% from last year. Corporate cousin Paramount+’s version of event also saw a big bump, up 33% from its previous record as the service’s most-watched streaming show.

The awards featured a number of notable, emotionally affecting moments that likely will remain in heavy online rotation for months to come, including the 50th-year tribute to hip hop, the multi-part in memoriam section, or that shredding Chris Stapleton guitar solo alongside Stevie Wonder in Higher Ground as part of the Motown medley.

The Grammy ‘casts didn’t go off completely without a hitch. Paramount Plus left many frustrated fans pouting on social media when they couldn’t immediately access the show. The Unholy performance by Sam Smith and Kim Petras predictably set off fulminating pastors and other conservative critics (mission accomplished, Sam and Kim).

More problematically, CBS also got blasted for a lack of Spanish-language closed captions for the show-opening song from Bad Bunny, the year’s biggest-selling, most-watched artist and avatar of a massive global following, especially in Latin America. Instead, CBS captions merely noted that Bad Bunny was speaking a “non-English language.” It was, as they say, fixed in post.

Less clear is what’s next for the controversy-dogged Golden Globes, traditionally the kickoff event for Oscar season on the first weekend after New Year’s Day.

NBC hosted the Globes’ return to air, after an LA Times investigation of the parent Hollywood Foreign Press Association and resulting celebrity boycott drove the show into hiatus last year. After a year in limbo and numerous HFPA reforms, NBC and Peacock brought the show back on a one-year basis.

The result was an entertaining, if somewhat shambolic show not much different in tone and looseness from previous editions, though with a notably higher number of Black and other POC winners, presenters and emcee, a pensive and lacerating Jerrod Carmichael.

The so-called “woke” Globes did about as well as one would expect in these partisan times: Overnight ratings on NBC were down 26% from 2021 (which already sustained its own ratings collapse from previous levels), to a mere 6.9 million viewers. The live telecast averaged a 1.1 rating in the core demographic of 18 to 49, down 27% from 2021.

But this was also the first year the Globes were live-streamed on Peacock, where it attracted 33 million minutes of viewing. Evaluating what that means is difficult: stats get messy quickly here.

But Peacock said the show attracted 793,000 “video starts.” That’s about 11% of the broadcast viewership, though it’s important to note a single household/viewer could have multiple starts. Still, going online somewhere in the future represents a promising option as the HFPA, investor/backer Todd Boehly, and NBCUniversal all contemplate next steps.

Someone will probably bite on the Globes in coming months, especially online, given its traditional usefulness in kick-starting the Oscar voting season.

More generally, expect more migrations to streaming for at least the bigger awards shows. Increasingly cost-conscious streaming services want more inexpensive, high-profile programming that works both live and (at least in segments) in replays.

Hybrid streams/broadcasts, as with the Grammys and Globes, will be more common for a while as the shows transition to more sustainable long-term homes online, while still milking what’s left of legacy audiences.

That’s because of one of Hollywood’s ineluctable laws: nothing is more eternal than a performer’s boundless desire to win a bunch of awards and thank all the little people who got them there.