Golden Globes tanks with viewers - lowest ceremony ratings in 28 years

The Golden Globes had a serious stink about them.

As an awards show, it has always been a joke - once you get past the small number of HFPA members voting for the awards, once you get past the fact HFPA members were largely not serious press journalists and were an invite-only group of fame-leeches who were only required to publish a handful of articles each year (which could be to a personal blog for all the HFPA care), and once you get past the corruption and other shady practices of the HFPA, you were left with an organization that also happened to be... look, I don't want to say they're racist... but they were all very white and largely nominated white people for awards.

But the award show made money. And Hollywood liked them as they provided a venue to promote movies and TV shows. And the show rated alright.

A few years ago the HFPA got called out on their bullsh*t. Hollywood turned its back on the Globes and in 2022 NBC opted not to air the award show.

Somehow - largely through sheer willpower and promises to do better - this year the HFPA got their cash cow awards show back on the air.

Audiences didn't care. Yesterday's Golden Globes were the lowest rated ceremony in 28 years. 6.25 million viewers watched in the US, which is down from 10% who tuned in back in 2021 for the last show which was broadcast during the height of the pandemic.

Technically, there was a lower-rated broadcast back in 2008, but that had 6 million people tuning in to watch a presentation where the HFPA simply announced a list of winners on stage - there was no regular ceremony that year thanks to the writers strike.

The drop in viewership can't be attributed solely to the HFPA stink. Real talk: regular audiences don't care about how dodgy the awards are or how lacking in integrity they may be - they just want to see famous people get awards and confirmation of their own taste in TV/movies.

Ratings declines are in line with diminished broadcast TV viewership combined with NBC moving the Golden Globes mid-week instead of a standard Sunday broadcast. There has also been a general trend of audiences losing interest in self-contratulatory awards shows in general.

Considering the declining interest in awards shows and the expense of staging them, you would have to think networks would be mad to acquire the rights to any of them...

Netflix the new home of the SAG Awards

Netflix's interest in live TV doesn't end with the streaming of that Chris Rock comedy special. In their efforts to be more and more like broadcast TV, it will live stream the SAG Awards in 2024.

Noteworthy is that Netflix actually has the rights to The 2023 Screen Actors Guild Awards too, but seemingly isn't going to be ready to live stream it on its own platform. Instead, on Feb 24 you can watch this years awards on Netflix's YouTube channel.

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