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'Sarah Connor' Is a Winner. Golden Globes? Terminated.

Hollywood Foreign Press Association President Jorge Camara tries to prop up the Golden Globe awards.
Hollywood Foreign Press Association President Jorge Camara tries to prop up the Golden Globe awards. (By Mark J. Terrill -- Associated Press)
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Golden Globe Awards. About 6 million people under the impression Billy Bush is as big a star as Jack Nicholson tuned in to NBC's Bush-hosted reading of the Golden Globe winners' names. Who knows, maybe they were the same 6 million who caught What's Left of the People's Choice Awards. Usually, the Globes, best known for sightings of a fractured Nicholson, can be counted on to cough up 20-something-million viewers. But this year's ceremony also was declared struck by the writers, leaving the Hollywood Foreign Press Association with nothing more than a news conference. Another half-million viewers watched the announcement of winners' names on E!, and yet another half-million watched on TV Guide Channel.

Critics' Choice Awards. Mysteriously, the number of people who watched the struck Golden Globe Awards news conference on E! and on TV Guide Channel is virtually identical to the number of people who watched last week's non-struck Critics' Choice Awards on VH1, even though that show was thick with A-listers like Brangelina and George Clooney because the Writers Guild gave it a pass.

The week's 10 most watched programs, in order, were: CBS's Saturday AFC semifinal; Fox's Monday [insurance company] Bowl Championship Series game; Fox's "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" premiere; CBS's "CSI"; ABC's "Grey's Anatomy"; Part 1 of CBS's "Comanche Moon"'; NBC's "Law & Order: SVU"; CBS's "Criminal Minds"; ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition"; and CBS's "Without a Trace."

* * *

The Writers Guild says it will not picket the upcoming NAACP Image Awards, but it has pretty much thrown the Grammys under the bus.

Organizers for the music awards yesterday asked for an interim agreement to let striking writers work on the show. But any such request is "unlikely to be granted," WGA West rep Gregg Mitchell said cryptically to various media outlets earlier in the day.

The WGA has been more communicative with the Screen Actors Guild about the Grammy-cast: "WGA has informed us that this is struck work," SAG told Reuters on Monday. "In those circumstances our members have been unwilling to cross a picket line and we anticipate that solidarity will continue."

You bet it will, since the WGA has given SAG a waiver for its trophy show, to be telecast next month on TNT and TBS.

It's an ominous deja vu. Before any waiver was sought for the Golden Globe Awards, the WGA said it probably would give it a thumbs-down, which, coincidentally, is exactly what it did. SAG then announced its members would not cross the WGA's Globes picket line, and the rest is Golden Globes history (see Losers, above).

Not all music stars are SAG members. But Justin Timberlake is. So are Beyonc¿ and Alicia Keys, the Hollywood Reporter noted. And presumably, Jennifer Hudson and pretty much any singer who's ever turned up on a TV show or film in an acting capacity. Heck, K-Fed probably has a SAG card. Also missing from a Writers-Guild-struck Grammy-cast would be all those bits of film and TV on-air talent who doll up the place while presenting the trophies and hawking their latest projects.

CBS will air what's left of the 50th annual Grammy Awards on Feb. 10, from the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

Four days later, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, the Writers Guild will not picket the NAACP Image Awards. That's because of "the historic role the NAACP has played in struggles like ours," WGA West President Patric Verrone said in a news conference yesterday, adding, "We think this decision is appropriate to jointly achieve our goals."


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