| Hollywood award shows are setting records in all of the worst ways. The Emmy Awards attracted the smallest audience in at least three decades last September, while this year's Golden Globes fell to a 13-year low. Experts are already predicting the April 25 Oscars will be the least watched in the modern era, and the Grammys, airing Sunday night, are trying to avoid a similar fate. TV networks are quick to blame the pandemic, and there is no question it's had an effect. The absence of a crowd saps the energy from live events and hurts their TV ratings. The Oscars' red carpet, a lure for millions of viewers, isn't happening this year, nor are live concerts or blockbuster movies. The top contenders for best picture are "Nomadland," a bleak drama that almost nobody watched, and "The Trial of the Chicago 7," a polemic that alienated many of those who did. But the decline in ratings isn't new, it's just accelerated during the pandemic. Over the past decade, the Grammys audience has shrunk by more than 20 million viewers, while the Globes has lost more than 10 million. "It's just a constant decrease in ratings," said Don Mischer, who has produced the Academy Awards and the Emmys (and won some Emmys as well). Mischer fears we are watching the death of awards shows in real time. "I wish I could tell you that I see a solution coming," Mischer said. "But I'm not sure there is." While the decline of a few self-congratulatory Hollywood galas may seem trivial in the grand scheme of things, especially during a pandemic, these shows employ thousands of workers, and the groups that put them on use the profits to fund programs for the arts. TV networks pay tens of millions of dollars for the rights to broadcast individual awards shows, because they are part of an exclusive club: programming that needs to be seen live. In any given year, the Oscars and Grammys are among the only shows that can compete with live sports for viewers. And so, industry executives are preoccupied with diagnosing the cause of the disease, and identifying a cure. Mischer blames the rise of streaming services, which have drawn viewers away from pay TV and fragmented the audience. Older folks watch live TV, and the young stream. The Emmys in recent years have been a three-hour advertisement for Netflix and Amazon, while the Grammy Awards have struggled to find performers who appeal to both the average CBS viewer and their grandkids. "There are so many options of what to watch on TV that award shows are just kind of losing interest," Mischer said. The internet has damaged awards shows in more ways than one. When the Oscars were first televised in 1953, it was one of few ways people could see so much star power in one room. Now, all they need to do is open up Instagram. This gets at the biggest problem of all: awards shows no longer feel special. As soon as the Oscars started collecting millions of dollars for broadcast rights, opportunists decided to turn a couple of awards shows into awards season, a never-ending cycle that runs from the film festivals and Emmys in the fall through the guild awards and the Globes in the winter to the Oscars in later in the new year. If the Grammys aren't enough for you, you can watch the American Music Awards, the Billboard Music Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards and the Academy of Country Music Awards. This glut has made the entire format stale. Producers have tried over the years to reinvent the wheel, eliminating categories or introducing new stunts. The pandemic required producers to mix it up, producing a few innovations. The Emmy Awards were delivered to people at home. The BET Awards reimagined performances as individual music videos. But all of the producers agree change is needed. ""The format needed a creative shot in the arm," said Jesse Collins, whose credits include the BET Awards and this year's Grammys and Oscars. "Everyone will take new ideas that have come out of this pandemic and inject them into whatever awards show come in the future." There's just one problem: the academies. Members of the various groups stand in the way of dramatic change. Think about how long it's taken to make their bodies more diverse, and the continued struggle to field a diverse group of nominees. That's only happened because they were publicly shamed. But let's say, for a second, that they are open to change. How would you reimagine the shows? I spoke with awards-show producers, TV executives and a few industry experts to settle on four easy ideas. Rule #1: Cut back on the awards. The Emmy organizers hand out 27 awards in three hours, leaving just 22 minutes in the rest of the program for anything that isn't an award. Nobody needs to see "Schitt's Creek" win seven awards in a row across the entire first hour (except for the producers of the show). The Oscars are even worse, handing out prizes like sound editing and short films to people no one has ever heard of. "Awards show planners should start from the premise that nobody cares who wins the awards," said Matt Belloni, former editorial director of The Hollywood Reporter. Rule #2: Emphasize the show in awards shows. This is the one area where the Grammys really get it right. The Grammys aren't an awards show. They are a showcase for the biggest artists to perform in ways no one has seen before. Imagine if the Emmys or Oscars followed this lead. What if the Oscars asked all the nominees for best actress and best actor to get together on-stage and reenact a famous scene from a classic movie? Or if the Emmys had "Saturday Night Live" create a sketch lampooning some part of the industry every year? Rule #3: More footage, less politics. Every single network executive told me that the political speechifying at these awards shows turns away many viewers. You could eliminate some of this by reducing the numbers of awards. So how do you fill the time? Why not have studios cut together three-minute segments from upcoming movies to get fans excited? Or have TV networks tease upcoming seasons of popular show? "The movies have blockbusters everyone cares about," Belloni said. "TV has storylines people care about. How do you leverage those to create an environment where people tune in knowing they'll get something they want?" So what does Mischer think so far? "These are great ideas, you should be a producer," he joked, before noting that the Grammys do most of this already and still lose viewers. Companies that rely on these awards shows, like Dick Clark Productions, believe the decline may be cyclical. Ratings fall when the country is upset or distracted, as it has been for the past few years. The events still outdraw almost any scripted show, which makes them valuable to the networks and to advertisers. That brings us to the easiest solution of all... Rule #4: Stream it. Dick Clark Productions is pushing for Walt Disney to put the American Music Awards on both Hulu and ABC, and wants the Billboard Music Awards to be on both NBC and Peacock, which are both owned by Comcast. "Our content is still valued," said Amy Thurlow, president of Dick Clark Productions. "It's not a creative or content issue. It's a distribution issue." As more viewers shift to streaming from cable, some media companies still don't have the technical capability or the rights to offer awards shows on their streaming services. But that's changing, starting with sports. After Disney, ViacomCBS and NBCUniversal convince sports leagues to put games on streaming, they will turn to awards shows. The motion-picture academy would probably implode before letting Netflix air the Oscars. But the groups that hand out awards might be open to airing a show on ABC and Hulu at the same time, or on NBC and Peacock. Dick Clark Productions is planning for the Academy of Country Music Awards to be on both CBS and Paramount+. Hopefully it's not too late. – Lucas Shaw The best of Screentime (and other stuff) | 
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