The Golden Globe Awards have come and gone with barely a whisper, except from depressingly enthusiastic media journalists who were falling all over themselves with excitement at the prospect of being on TV. But, to be fair, the Golden Globes have always been kind of a dud, occupying a nebulous funnel of quasi-respectability somewhere in between the Emmys and the Peoples' Choice Awards. The big question on everyone's lips, with the Writer's Guild of America strike entering its third month, is: will the Oscars be cancelled?
MSN seems to think they just might. With the Golden Globes allowed to rot on the vine, their analysis is that it's more likely than not that if a deal isn't reached, the producers won't be willing to risk boycotts by big stars and put on the sort of joyless press conference they did on Sunday. While industry spokesmen are wearing their hopeful faces — AMPAS executive director Bruce Davis says production plans for the Academy Awards are proceeding as usual, and "at this stage we are still making our plan as normal" — insiders are less so, and there's a more than average degree of confidence that the 80th annual Academy Awards presentation will be the biggest non-event since the 1994 World Series.
Mediaweek, meanwhile, offers no predictions about how likely the cancellation of Oscar night may be, but it does provide a fascinating breakdown of who the financial winners and losers are likely to be if the event does fall through. The networks, of course, bear the biggest brunt: estimates of lost advertising revenue from the Golden Globe fiasco ranged anywhere from $10 to $15 million, and if the Academy Awards follow suit, NBC's ad losses could be anywhere from eight to ten times that amount.
The WGA, at any rate, seem to be aiming their pickets where they'll do the most good: they've specifically targeted big money generators like the Globes and the Oscars, but, in an attempt to short-circuit criticism that their strike is hurting the little guy, they've issued waivers for their members to attend events like the Independent Spirit Awards and the NAACP Image Awards, ensuring those events won't suffer from a picket. It's a PR move that comes at a critical time for the union, as networks and media companies set to announce massive layoffs, opting out of production contracts with a 'force majeure' clause and losing, as with ABC, as much as 25% of their working staff.
If there's any good news, it's that both sides are taking the possibility of cancelling of the Oscars very, very seriously, as Tim Goodman of the SF Gate writes. Faced with the possibility of their biggest annual cash cow being led to slaughter, the WGA and the AMPTP have scheduled a negotiation session for the first time in over a month, with the possibility of the Director's Guild and the Screen Actors Guild pushing for both sides to strike a deal so that everyone has a place at the table come Feb. 24th. "If no one gets to see you win on TV," says Goodman, "it's like it didn't happen." How Zen!