Should the Grammys follow Oscars' lead?

This morning's news that the Academy Awards will widen the best picture category from five to 10 films has put the Grammys on the opposite end of an award show trend. Earlier this year, the Emmys announced they would expand nominations in a number of categories from five to six.

Should the Grammys follow suit? The Recording Academy's telecast is already bloated, featuring a whopping 109 categories (take that, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and your 24 fields!). Yet it's in the best interest of the Recording Academy to have a high number of categories.The more labels and artists in the running, the more people to recruit for memberships ($100 per year). 

Having such a high number of albums up for consideration also allows Recording Academy voters to save face. Among the 109 fields, there's plenty of quality work, even if it's not represented in the major categories. When Radiohead lost album of the year, it was still a Grammy winner, having earlier taken alternative music album.

Everyone's a winner, and everyone's happy.

Yet it doesn't make for riveting television. It also allows the Grammy broadcast to continue to fail in turning viewers on to new music. There was never any doubt that Robert Plant and Alison Krauss would win top prize with "Raising Sand" at this year's telecast. Other top-prize nominees -- Radiohead, Lil Wayne and Coldplay -- would all be awarded in their genre ghettos, and Ne-Yo, who rounded out the field, wasn't going to beat out a collaboration between two industry legends. 

A quick fix, albeit one that would likely never happen, would be to widen the album of the year category to 10 albums, and strike the number of categories from 109 to say, 30, tops (read Bill Wyman's argument on why the Grammys should trim its categories for further on the subject). The result would force voters to create a more diverse album of the year field, and would no longer allow albums to simply be relegated to their respective genres.

An argument against is that the Grammys would simply resemble the American Music Awards, which pointlessly laud the year's top-selling albums. Recording Academy voters are not always the most adventurous lot, and it's certainly true that most of the artists recognized by the Grammys in the pre-telecast would simply fall by the wayside. 

Yet those pre-show wins aren't exactly making artists'  careers. Jimmy Sturr, for instance, received more press when the Grammys removed the polka category than he did for any of his 18 Grammy wins. A trimmer number of categories and a wider album of the year field would force voters to make tougher choices, and perhaps with 10 albums to choose from, at least one or two could go to artists releasing works outside the major label system.

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Radiohead, who were never going to win a Grammy for album of the year, performing at the Grammys. Credit: Associated Press

Comments

[norman]

How about not? The Grammys are the most pretentious event of the year, and newspapers like the LA Times, only add more publicity to the event. Radiohead clearly got cheated for the best album this year for Raising Sand, a Robert Plant and Alison Krauss collaboration that people will forget about in 2 years. How about they start giving Grammys to people who deserve it? Seriously every year people know that John Mayer, Mary J Blige, U2, Stevie Wonder, Tony Bennett and Alison Krauss are going to win in whatever category their nominated for. It's a joke.