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Golden Globes TV show is cancelled

Globes TV show cancelledIt is official – the Golden Globes will not be broadcast on TV because of the WGA strike.

BBC News reports:

The Golden Globes ceremony has been cancelled and replaced with a news conference because of the strike by writers over royalties.

The winners will now be revealed at an hour-long press conference replacing the usual dinner and ceremony.

Actors had said they would not cross picket lines in support of writers. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) has been on strike since November over “residuals” – royalties for work distributed online or on DVD.

The dispute has brought to a standstill the production of nearly all TV comedy and drama shows.

Nikki Finke of Deadline Hollywood Daily describes how the ceremony will now take place without the live cameras:

I’ve just obtained the unofficial NBC schedule for the Golden Globes on January 13th now that the big full frills show has been cancelled because of the Writers Guild picket lines.

Instead, NBC and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and Dick Clark Productions are attempting to circumvent the strike by stringing together a series ofย  “awards news” telecasts that allows them to fill up the block of airtime already allotted for the show and sold to advertisers:

  • At 9 PM there will be a press conference covered by NBC News announcing the Golden Globe winners. (9pm-10pm)
  • At 8 PM, we are negotiating with Dick Clark Enterprises for a one-hour retrospective/clip show.
  • At 7 PM, we will air a Dateline with clips and interviews with nominees. (Currently scheduled to air for two hours on Saturday night.)
  • At 10 PM, we will broadcast an “Access Hollywood” style, Golden Globes party show…visiting the various parties in Hollywood

The big question is how this will now affect the Oscars.

David Germain of the AP writes:

With the Screen Actors Guild in lockstep with writers, nominees and other celebrities would have stayed away from Sunday’s Globes. The same prospect now hangs over the Oscars.

“No matter what anybody says, if the WGA goes on strike and SAG is in support, then there’s no Oscar show. It’s as simple as that,” said Harvey Weinstein, whose former company Miramax was a frequent Oscar winner and who now runs the Weinstein Co.

He said it’s more likely the guild ultimately would agree to let its writers work on the Oscars. But Patric Verrone, president of the Writers Guild of America, West, said the union would turn down any request from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for its members to work on the Oscars.

Gil Cates, producer of the Oscar broadcast, said the academy will put on its Oscar show Feb. 24 as planned โ€” with or without the writers. “We are going to do it,” Cates said. “I can’t elaborate on how we’re going to do it, because I don’t want anybody to deal with the elaboration in a way that might impact its success.”

We will have to wait and see.

> BBC News Q&A on the WGA Strike
> New York Times report on the cancellation