Sunday was the Emmy’s – the new bastard step-child of award shows. It wasn’t always this way though. As much as I love to see who wins, and what people are wearing those responsible for putting the Emmy’s together have run out of ideas and are scraping the bottom of the barrel and have been doing so for several years now. I much prefer watching the Golden Globes, the Oscar’s and the Independent Spirit Awards. Heck, I even enjoy the SAG Awards.
Let’s face it. The Emmy’s peaked when Conan O’Brian hosted them a few years ago.
Since Mr. O’Brian brought a much needed sense of levity to the show they’ve gone downhill. Last year they did the much annoying “Emmy’s in the round” hosted by Ryan Seacrest, and this year they had five hosts. Five.
Let’s talk for a moment about the until recently dumbest thing they had done – the round format. Think about this logically. Let’s get all of TV’s hottest stars, directors, writers, producers, various celebrities, etc. and get them dressed to the nines, and then place them all around a circular stage so that for at least half the ceremony half of these Hollywood players are staring at the host, presenters and winners backs…I don’t know about you but this seems completely illogical to me. I don’t even like going to a concert where I am going to get a profile view of the performer based on my seat, but to be a power player and be seated BEHIND the action????
That doesn’t even begin to cover the other great problem with last year’s show – their choice of host in Ryan Seacrest. Don’t get me wrong. When Seacrest used to be on Star 98.7 I listened to him all the time, I thought he was fun and a great host; I don’t even think he’s bad on American Idol. A little annoying sometimes but not bad. However, to expect Seacrest to be able to adlib, or to let him go through multiple costume changes…that was just odd placed on top of the badness of the presentation. See the photographic evidence.
Now we are brought to this year’s ceremony. The positive thing I can say about the broadcast is that they got rid of the round format. However, for the 60th anniversary of the awards they decided to let the five nominees for Best Reality TV Host be the hosts of the program. The person who thought this was a good idea needs to be removed.
One of the primary issues with awards shows that are broadcast on television is that they tend to run very long, over the scheduled time…and that’s with one host. I don’t see why adding four additional hosts seemed like a good idea for that alone.
They realized they were so far behind that about half way through the show they cut all of the little jokes and banter the presenters were supposed to do before each award; they would just introduce the presenter and the pissed off presenters would come out announce the nominees, open the envelope and walk off the stage. On top of this a great many of the winners were played off. Not classy. I am sure there are a bunch of pissed celebrities that will think twice before being involved with the broadcast again.
Then there is a matter of the dialogue delivered by the hosts. These are reality tv hosts, they really don’t have much deviation from episode to episode – they say the same things, or nearly the same things every week. They are not people who should go off book, especially Howie Mendel and Tom Bergeron. Bergen had nothing entertaining to say and Mendel rambled so much it was obvious he had no idea when to shut up. Jeff Probst and Heidi Klum are at least charismatic as can be, and Seacrest isn’t that annoying, but that really didn’t help. It also really didn’t help that they hosts gave a bad first impression because Oprah was brought in to introduce the show and then the hosts were brought out to again introduce the show…and they stood with nothing to say and no idea of who should speak first, and they blamed it all on Oprah taking their intro.
Seriously, whoever planned this year’s show needs grave evaluation. There are very obvious reasons the show has dropped in the ratings and got such scathing reviews this year. Five of them.
Come on people, fess up. You know we’re all just watching to the Emmy’s as a place holder. The Golden Globes are much cooler to get for a TV program. Thank God the Emmy’s are not really the start of award season.
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