Man the drama just never ends. As most of you now know, the Golden Globe ceremonies where cancelled this year due to complications with the current WGA strike and instead was set to be just a press conference announcing the winners of this years awards. NBC was still the exclusive carrier of the “press conference”.
But it seems that behind the scenes a lot of bad blood between NBC and the Hollywood Foreign Press (the people behind the Golden Globes) as built to the point that the Golden Globes has been stripped away from NBC and will now be an open even (like a real press conference) where any and all media outlets can attend and broadcast.
The Hollywood Reporter has this:
But sources said the HFPA and Dick Clark Prods., with whom the network has a contract, was incensed with what it perceived as a loss of creative control. It sought more influence over who would appear on the program. At the same time, a dispute brewed between Dick Clark and NBC over clips to be delivered for a “Dateline” show. Sources say the network had agreed to pick up all of Dick Clark’s preproduction costs for the show, an amount estimated at $1.25 million, in exchange for the clips. But Dick Clark said it was entitled to a separate fee for the graphics package as part of the three-hour block it was offering the network. The clips were never delivered and a check was never cut.
The dispute over the clips, however, was just a prelude to Friday’s fireworks. That’s when Dick Clark and the HFPA, still upset over creative control, asked for a fee — either below $1 million or at $1 million, depending on which side is estimating it — that NBC would pay for airing exclusively a Globes-branded telecast. (NBC normally pays about $5 million to air the Globes.)
Dick Clark acknowledged the fee request in a statement that read, in part, “NBC wanted to have an exclusive three-hour broadcast special disguised as a news conference that would bar all other media, and yet was unwilling to pay a nominal license fee.”
This might be for the best for all concerned. I really haven’t spoken to anyone that was planning on watching the Globes “press conference” anyway, and perhaps with the event being open to more media outlets it might get a little more attention than it was going to.
Still, even with the event now being open to all media, ABC, CBS and FOX have all said they aren’t going to carry the event and will just keep their regular Sunday shows instead. And with NBC being so upset, they may just drop it too… which would mean NONE of the major media companies will carry the event. It’ll be interesting to see how this turns out.
