The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the voting body which doles out the Golden Globe Awards each year, has had a stink on it for years. But this year, that stink finally transformed from a whiff that many high-profile celebrities and companies were willing to put up with into a full-blown stench that is generating significant consequences for the controversy-ridden organization. The latest blow came courtesy of NBC, when the network announced today that it will not air the Golden Globes 2022 award ceremony because the HFPA needs time to adopt meaningful reform within its ranks.
NBC released this statement today, revealing that it will not be involved with the Golden Globes 2022 ceremony: “We continue to believe that the HFPA is committed to meaningful reform. However, change of this magnitude takes time and work, and we feel strongly that the HFPA needs time to do it right. As such, NBC will not air the 2022 Golden Globes. Assuming the organization executes on its plan, we are hopeful we will be in a position to air the show in January 2023.”
This may be curtains for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the 90ish-member organization that has been mired in controversy ever since The Los Angeles Times published an exposé about them a few months ago. That article delved into the laughably bad level of diversity among its voting body, and revealed that many members were flown out at grand expense to visit the set of Netflix’s Emily in Paris and were put up in fancy hotels in the French capital. These types of practices had been going on for years, but in a post-Weinstein Hollywood landscape in which people are calling out behavior that used to be tolerated in the industry, it seems that the HFPA’s past is finally catching up with it.
Last week, the group stated that it would increase the number of people of color in its ranks, and limits the amount of gifts members can receive from potential nominees. But according to Variety, “NBC execs were concerned that the HFPA hadn’t set a timeline for change, and the network had seen no movement on how it might rethink its membership goals. NBC had anted to see a comprehensive plan that included a doubling of the HFPA membership plus one — meaning that the number of new members would outweigh the old membership. NBC execs continued asking the HFPA for a calendar, and after not seeing a timeline — despite the reform plan announced a week ago — the network decided that it became clear there couldn’t be a show in 2022.”
After a whirlwind past few months, which saw, among other things, the organization hire a diversity consultant who quickly resigned after realizing the scope of the problem was beyond his original understanding, a new wave of consequences has begun to hit the HFPA’s shores. WarnerMedia, Netflix, and Amazon are among the big companies that have severed ties with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Tom Cruise has announced he is returning the three awards he’s won from them over the years, and now NBC says it will not air the 2022 ceremony. There are still some lingering questions about that: will the network have to fork over the $60 million fee they pay the organization each year for the rights to broadcast the show? Will some other network step in to broadcast the show? Will there simply not be a Golden Globes in 2022? Could some other awards show take its place? Stay tuned to find out.
The post Golden Globes 2022: NBC Will Not Air the Award Show Because of Controversies Surrounding the Hollywood Foreign Press Association appeared first on /Film.
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