The Queen: Live or Memorex?
For your first immediate real-time look at how the hugely profitable - and highly viewed - awards industry has been hit by the writers strike, check out tonight's telecast of the People's Choice Awards.
Whether this brand new format - created specifically to avert those deadly picket lines and no-show actors and actresses - will work will depend on whether viewers at home swallow the whole thing. But the folks at PCA have already PRE-TAPED the winner's speeches.
That's right. You heard me correctly. Pre-taped - and pre-taped all of them, dozens of people, who will win an award in one of 39 categories presented tonight. It's clever, very clever, or at least a hell of a lot smarter than what those knuckleheads at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association have gotten themselves stuck with. Credit goes to PCA chief Fred Nelson who figured there'd be a problem back in December (the strike started at the beginning of November) and started taping then.
Let there be no mistake: The PCAs have hardly got the cache of the Golden Globes, but they do mount a good live show. Tonight's PCAs? Taped, for the most part. Irony here is that this one will be directed by superduper live event specialist Bruce Gowers, who did honors on New Years Eve for ABC - and, incidentally, is "American Idol's" longtime maestro.
Ratings are always pretty good too while winners - though they know they're clutching just a PCA statue that they will probably NOT set on the mantle next to the Emmy -are almost always game when they get on stage. ("oh thank YOU!! THANK YOU!!!! YOU LOVE ME! YOU REALLY DO!!")
With a few exceptions - like when Queen Latifah's on-screen presenting an award - tonight won't be live at all, but sort of like a magazine show, similar to "ET" or "Access Hollywood."
Show airs at 9 on CBS.