Monday, January 12, 2009

The Golden Globes: What It Means for TV

I'm going to be honest, while I love the Golden Globes because movies + TV + celebs + alcohol - too many montages = best award show ever, I'm a little concerned with the way the awards played out this year. On the drama side, we had Mad Men, a wonderful show that no one watches, and Gabriel Byrne and Anna Paquin, stars of two HBO shows. On the comedy side, we had a clean sweep by 30 Rock, with Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey taking the acting awards. The supporting awards didn't even go to shows, but rather to two actors from HBO miniseries. I think this years Globes were the crystallization of what we've been seeing over the past few years: the death of big broadcast TV. We all know that network ratings have been eroding slowly for years, but at the very least there have always been a few netowrk shows that were able to keep the critical praise (except for years in which the Sopranos was nominated). Now even that's starting to feel in doubt. Now I know you'll say 30 Rock is a network show, but let's be honest, it's an anomaly on a channel increasingly dominated by reality shows, a channel willing to abandon 5 hours of scripted programming each week for a late-primetime talk show. While I don't expect the broadcast networks to recover, I sometimes wonder what it will mean for the medium I love so much in the future. Any ideas?