As TV audiences stay away, awards shows are in crisis but do they deserve to be saved?

From The Weeknd's snub to historically low audience numbers, awards shows are clearly in crisis and it's not just because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has shutteredmovie theatres and concert venues for much of the past year.

All of the major ceremonies struggled through the pandemic. The Emmys which were among the first to take place during physical-distancing measures managed to put on a glitch-free eventlast September but maintained the same dismal TV ratings as the year before.

The Academy Awards took place early enough in 2020 to avoidCOVID-19 changes, but organizers were forced to push this year'sdate back bytwo months as critics called for the showto be cancelled entirely.

And the two shows that have taken place this year the Grammys and the Golden Globes saw almost unimaginably low ratings. According to marketing research firm Nielsen, their falls from 2020were precipitousand eerily similar.

Last year, the Grammyspulled in 18.7 million viewers, while the Golden Globes attracted18.3 million; in 2021, the numbers fellto 7.8 million and 6.9 million viewers, respectively drops of more than60per cent.

"This is actually nothing new, but it's accelerated," Richard Rushfield, editor-in-chief of Hollywood newsletter The Ankler, said in an interview with CBC News. "Things that might have taken 10 years have now happened in six months."

Rushfield said thosenumbers have been dropping for years due to a disconnect between audiences and those who decide what gets nominated with the nominated content shiftingtoward highbrowmoviesand away from what manypeople actually watch.The awards shows themselves become"less a part of people's lives," he said, while drivingsome existing viewersawayand drawing virtually no new ones at all.

That has been reflected in television ratings. While the Grammys and Golden Globes saw huge declinesthis year, the genre was already suffering. Between 2010 and 2020, audience sizes for the Oscars and Emmys shrank by nearly half, and the Grammys dropped by more thana third.

The Golden Globes fared better before this year's ratings catastrophe, but with half of their focus being ontelevision shows and a stronger popular appeal compared withthe industry prestige commanded by the Emmys Rushfield said it should havebeen the one show to make it through COVID-19 with solid numbers.

WATCH | Can more diverse nominees help save awards shows?

Can more diverse nominees help save awards shows?

4 years ago

Duration 2:03

Oscar nominations this year are more diverse than they've ever been, featuring nine actors of colour and two women up for best director. But low ratings for both the Golden Globes and the Grammys have raised questions about the relevance of awards shows.

While the potential lossof awards shows may not seem like much of a loss to audiences already ignoring them, there could be a knock-on effect. While blockbuster movies and established musicians have built-in followings long before they make it to awards season, smaller and more intimate productions can see their popularity skyrocket, even from a nomination.

In 2016, Vox reported that studios spent between $3 million and $10 million US on an Oscar campaign for the prestige and attention it givestheir films. For music, one need look no further than artists such asdark horse album of the year nominee Jacob Collier. His nomination spawned a slew of press coverage on both his talentand why more people should pay attention to his work.

Even beyond publicity, awards are still important milestones for creators. When Canadian musician JP Saxe was nominated for this year's Junos, he said it felt like a sense of arrival even after spending a year at the top of the charts.

"It's a validation from my home," Saxe said in an interview with CBCNews. "And there's nothing quite like getting love from your home."

So if awards shows cease to exist, it could affect the content audiences actually get to see and hear. Without awards shows, Rushfield said, the independent sector would lose a fundamental tool for getting word out about their creations.

"If Oscar suffers a downtick like the Golden Globes did ... ABC, which pays a huge fee to sponsor the Oscars, certainly won't be coming back next year saying, 'Ohyeah, we'll just keep writing the same cheque no matter what,'" he said.

Awards show reinventions

The downfall of awards shows isn't for lack of change. The Grammys orchestrated a physically distanced live show to combat "Zoom fatigue," while the Oscars began to change the#OscarsSoWhite perception that has plagued them for years.

This year's slate of nominations, announced on Monday ahead of the April 25 show, made history as the most diverse ever. Nine of the 20 acting nominees are people of colour an Oscars record.

In addition, two women Chlo Zhao and Emerald Fennell were nominated for best director for the first time. Steven Yeun, who stars in Minari, became the first Asian American ever nominated for best actor;Chadwick Bosemanbecame the first actor of colour to earn a posthumous nominationfor his role in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom; and the category itself was for the first time not dominated by white actors.

Toronto film critic Sarah-Tai Black said she's happy to see those changesbut finds both the motivation and timeliness of themsuspect.

While she said she wants to believe that the diversity of this year's Oscar nominees is genuine, her"knee-jerk instinct" is to believe it was instead motivated by the voters' desire to appear progressive in orderto serve the academy's "ego or their image."

That in itself could alter the movies that make their way to audiences.There's an additional risk thatas the Oscars' popularity continues to wane, theirdiverse selection of films could be blamed despite that decline beginning years before nominees became more diverse, she said.

"Essentially the issue for any failing institution, is ... was it before or after they decided that they could do better?" Black said.

"Hopefully all of us would know that [idea] is patently untrueand, you know, just things coming to their natural end."

Losing a 'communal focal point'

Awards shows could do a better job of connecting with audiences, Black said, by reimagining themselves as a source of entertainmentinstead of a body that judges it. Audiences already watch these shows mostlyfor musical performances and to see thehosts, while "knowing in the back of their minds that these awards kind of mean nothing."

Sarah Bay-Cheng, dean of York University'sSchool of the Arts, Media,Performance and Design in Toronto, views the problem in a similar way. While COVID-19's slate of virtual awards shows have less of an allure to audiences, the decentralization of media criticism has been going on for years, she said,

"I don't know that a few central bodies have the same kind of weight in terms of ... what is the most interesting show to see, what are the movies that really matter?" she said.

For that reason, awards shows are commanding less attention no one feels the need to tune into an hours-long broadcast when they already know which movie they'd like to watch.

But losing these shows, Bay-Cheng said, means we lose a "communal focal point," a way to enjoy and critique media and its interpretation as a larger group.

"And I do worry that we're losing a sense of shared culture and shared narrative," she said. "But I'm not totally convinced the Oscars are necessarily the place where that can happen."

And while a slate of experts telling the publicwhat to watch could be seen as irrelevant today, she said, having a way to come together isn't.