Deathly dull Grammys and Oscars are heading for either oblivion or reinvention

If one of the great sorrowful mysteries of Irish life is why music on The Late Late Show always sounds as if it’s coming from the bottom of a toilet cistern, a related puzzle is how come Americans are so appallingly bad at live television.

As we wade wearily onward through the claggy waters of what some people insist on calling “awards season”, the evidence is available to see and hear. From Globes to Sags to Grammys to Oscars, there’s barely a Sunday night that doesn’t feature some sort of American bunfight celebrating the business they call show. Fortunately most take place while people in this part of the world are asleep, but it’s hard to avoid the reruns and clips that subsequently pop up across our screens. Like it or not, it’s a chance to sample the bum-numbing, self-congratulatory ad-loaded sludge that passes for live entertainment on US network television.

How did the word’s richest and most sophisticated media industry, with all the talent at its disposal, get to be so bad at the basics? Take last weekend’s Grammys, broadcast from the Los Angeles venue formerly known as the Staples Center (now renamed, in another intimation of the end times, the Crypto.Com Arena). Bona fide musical deities such as Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder floundered through amateurish medleys with murky lighting, missed cues and tinny sound. A celebration of 50 years of hip-hop with a stellar line-up including Missy Elliott, Queen Latifah, Run-DMC, Lil Wayne, Big Boi, Grandmaster Flash, Public Enemy and Salt-N-Pepa, boasted production values that would have had Philomena Begley bawling out Ryan Tubridy.

Only Lizzo, through sheer force of personality, talent and star wattage, was capable of lighting up the night. After her brief appearance, the show reverted its default: sugary sentimentality. “Protest turns into concert,” read the mocked-up headline onstage, alongside a photo of a police officer hugging a demonstrator. “Music is medicine,” read another. These weren’t real headlines, we were told. “But they could be.”

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“Music isn’t just the harmony of sound,” deadpanned host and now former comedian Trevor Noah. “It is the harmony of human beings.”

If the live TV audience is vanishing, what are these ceremonies actually for these days and why, when it comes to awards such as the Oscars, is the intensity and duration of the marketing campaigns devoted to the contenders increasing?

Why would anyone watch this muck? The answer is increasingly that they don’t. “Grammys audience jumps to 12.4 million viewers, biggest since 2020,” reported Variety of the show’s modest post-lockdown rebound. What the story didn’t mention was that only 10 years ago, the same event drew 40 million viewers. Similarly, last year’s Academy Awards ratings of 15 million; while up from less than 10 million in the previous year, contrast with 45 million a decade ago. These are the sort of extinction-event slides that make newspaper circulation figures look good.

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If the live TV audience is vanishing, what are these ceremonies actually for these days and why, when it comes to awards such as the Oscars, is the intensity and duration of the marketing campaigns devoted to the contenders increasing? One answer is that these shows’ primary purpose now is to generate online memes and other viral material on behalf of a small number of entertainment conglomerates. Another is that in a modern information economy characterised by an over-abundance of content, the pre-awards hoo-ha gives those same conglomerates a chance to cut through the noise by mimicking the media rituals of live sports coverage – the weeks-long build-up, the hot takes, the stories of veterans rewarded and rookies rising to the top

But while live sports remain popular with audiences, and awards shows appear to be hurtling towards oblivion, the fact remains that films, TV shows and recorded music – the basic building blocks of popular culture for the past three-quarters of a century – are still richer and freighted with more meaning. That may be why, regardless of their ratings collapse, the ceremonies continue to survive and even thrive as compelling signifiers of contemporary cultural narratives and social tensions.

Wheezing dinosaurs

It’s hardly an accident that much of the discourse around race and gender inequality in the American entertainment industry and, by extension, American society as well as in other parts of the world, has centred on controversies over who does or doesn’t get recognised at the Oscars or the Grammys, whether it’s Beyoncé́ losing out to Harry Styles or Andrea Riseborough allegedly displacing her black peers in nominations for best actress.

None of which answers the question of where the Grammys, Oscars and the rest are ultimately headed. Can some young production tyro reinvent them for the 21st century or will these wheezing dinosaurs of the analogue era ultimately expire once the audience dips so low that the idea of broadcasting them becomes laughable? Without a reinvention, it’s surely only a matter of time before the inevitable happens, and we’re predicting the nominations for next year’s Cryptos.