Golden Globes: Is the media too obsessed with a second-rate awards show?

After reading the avalanche of coverage about Tuesday's Golden Globes nominations, including a lengthy post focusing on the hapless nature of the awards from yours truly, a friend in the business asked a fair, but uncomfortable,  question: If all you guys in the media think the Globes are so lame, why do you give them such wall-to-wall coverage?

I started to argue with him -- journalists are congenitally defensive about criticism -- but I had to admit that he had a valid point. Entertainment TV and showbiz bloggers fell over themselves doing Globes updates while my newspaper devoted most of Wednesday's Calendar section to extensive Globes coverage, even as we pointed out all of the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn.'s many flaws, including nominating for best picture for comedy/musical such critically drubbed clunkers as "The Tourist" and "Burlesque."

For years, reporters have published embarrassing stories about the HFPA, whose 81 voting members are for the most part obscure foreign entertainment journalists with little of the cachet of the 6,000-plus voting members of the Motion Picture Academy. Globes voters have been involved in all sorts of scandals and gaffes over the years. If you talk to the top award-season consultants, they can barely disguise their lack of respect for the HFPA members, who often put themselves in indelicate situations, as with this year's crew, which took a Sony-sponsored trip to Las Vegas to see Cher in concert, then gave her film a stunning best picture nod.

So why do we lavish so much attention on the Globes? The honest answer is that we are largely following Hollywood's lead. The movie studios campaign hard for Globes victories, running tons of Globes-centric trade ads and making all of their stars available for post-nomination interviews as well as other events leading up to the awards ceremony. It is a firmly held industry belief that a strong Globes showing can help influence Oscar voters, even though the Globes' track record as an Oscar barometer is scattershot at best. For a number of years, their nominations portended Oscar triumph, but since "The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King's" win in 2005, only one Globes best picture winner ("Slumdog Millionaire") went on to win the top prize at the Oscars.

The Globes are sort of the Hollywood equivalent of the New Hampshire presidential primary, which inspires a tsunami of media coverage, even though as a small state its voters represent a tiny fraction of the overall presidential voting public. Like the Globes, it once had a reputation as an accurate predictive force, but in recent years its winners have a barely better than .500 batting average: Only two of the last four Republican primary winners went on to land their party's nomination while only three of the five last Democratic winners went on win their party's nominations (and some of those winners were sitting presidents). So why give New Hampshire so much respect? Old habits die hard.

The same goes for the Globes, which are a star-studded equivalent of an early presidential primary. There's no getting around it. If you put a ton of celebrities in a room together, the media will show up, which is why Comic-Con International in San Diego inspires days of endless blog dispatches, even though the event has long since evolved from a bona fide fan festival into a giant Hollywood promotional vehicle. No one can say we didn't cover the Globes with a critical eye, but I'd be the first to admit that the media now finds itself lavishing far too much attention on an awards show of questionable importance. 

-- Patrick Goldstein

RECENT AND RELATED: GOLDEN GLOBES TO JOHNNY DEPP: WE'RE SENDING A LIMO--OR TWO!

Photo: Cher, left, with Christina Aguilera at the Crazy Horse cabaret in Paris, promoting "Burlesque." Credit: Jacky Naegelen/Reuters

Comments

[Eric]

Nothing says irony like generating yet another article about excessive coverage of the Golden Globes ...

The significance of the Golden Globes is not in their ability to predict the Oscars, but in their ability to narrow -- and even define? -- the competitive field.

[misanthropicus]

Crap - Globes and Oscars, both are garbage.

[mipak]

Hollywood doesn't get the big picture but it will be soon be playing at local TV stations: The San Andreas will slip along 600 + miles of the fault all at once and the BIG ONE arrives with a 9.0+ bang that will devastate and bankrupt California.

[Rick Mitchell]

You and your readers might be interested in checking out Ezra Goodman's comments about the HFPA written 50 years ago in "The Fifty Year Decline and Fall of Hollywood."

[Jonny G.]

The fact is, the Globes are as critically valid as the Academy Awards at this point. Anyone who thinks Sandy Bullock won the Best Actress for merit is lying to him/herself (she admitted so herself when she won). That performance was about as artistically convincing as Burlesque, which was actually more fun, honest, and no-BS than the whole of Blind Side. The Academy Award wins have become as 'scattershot' as any Globe bestowals, so in the commercial realm of the Industry, they should be given equal coverage, for they are now equally bogus. The Razzies may be the only legitimately honest Hollywood awards show left.

[Philip in Paris]

Entertainment industry awards are not "important" (except I suppose for the people nominated!), but I must say I always find the Golden Globes show really enjoyable -- the mix of film and TV is cool, and because it's a dinner show the presenters and winners are generally more mellow.

[janey]

I always get a kick out of the jealousy that the American media shows towards the Golden Globes each and every year. It's like they can't stand how much attention the GG's gets and so they show scorn and ridicule as if the American awards are somehow better and the voting is more valid. Guess what? It's not and the viewing masses don't really care. We only want to be entertained and the GG people know how to throw a party like no other.

[TruthBtold]

We like the Globes because they award TV and Movies, but mostly because the nominees are relaxed and sometimes drunk.