Finally, the West Coast Can Catch the Globes on the First Spin

Because it's not 1990 and the shelf life for a trophy show is now about five minutes, NBC and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association have finally decided to air the 2010 Golden Globe Awards live across the country instead of tape-delayed on the West Coast.

For ages, award shows -- with the notable exception of the Academy Awards -- have typically aired live at 8 p.m. on the East Coast but have been delayed on the other side of the country to goose ratings.

The thinking was that there were a lot more Homes Using Television (the so-called HUT level) at 8 p.m. PDT than at 5 p.m. PDT (which is, of course, 8 p.m. EST). Conventional wisdom said it would hurt a trophy show's ratings in the West if it aired in pre-prime time (prime time starts at 8 p.m. Monday through Friday, 7 p.m. Sundays).

These days, however, there is this thing called the Web. News, and even leaked video of trophy-show acceptance speeches, can be viewed in Los Angeles -- the country's second-largest TV market, one of the centers of the entertainment industry and the town in which most awards shows are held -- almost as the event occurs, and three hours before the show actually airs in L.A. This falls into the category known as Stupid.

And of course, beyond the whole Web-leak thing, there's the prestige thing -- the Academy Awards airs live across the country, after all. The Globes clambake takes place weeks before the Oscars, and in some circles is considered the barometer for the Academy Awards; in other circles, it's considered the more-fun Academy Awards, because the brightest stars in the Hollywood firmament sit far more cozily around dinner tables and suck down vast quantities of alcohol during the ceremony.

"The Oscars is live [across the country] and it's a day of celebrating movies," noted Paul Telegdy, NBC's newish guy in charge of alternative programming and production, who joined the network in December -- too late to make this change in time for the January '09 Globes, though he did manage to get it broadcast in HD.

This year, when the Globes "called best picture [for] 'Slumdog,' it felt for me like it was really the start of the red-carpet season. . . . We're acknowledging the Golden Globes' increasing role as tastemaker," he continued.

"The Oscars is the coda" to trophy-show season, he said, "and the Golden Globes kicks it off."

The question is, will the number of West Coasters who will now watch the show on NBC, instead of on YouTube, compensate for the number of people who are not ready to watch TV at 5 p.m.?

That, of course, isn't as big a problem on Sundays as it is on, say, Mondays, for those of us who are working slobs. The Globes has traditionally aired on a Sunday, though there were those two dark years -- 2006 and 2007, when it got moved to Monday to make way for ABC's ratings monster "Desperate Housewives." Now that "DH" is a pale ratings version of its former self, the coast was clear to return this year's Globes to Sunday (it also aired on a Sunday in '08, but it was only a news conference, thanks to the writers' strike).

And, the 5 p.m. time slot on the West Coast is not so much of a problem in, say, January, when it's dark outside by that hour, as it is during the summer, when we're still out frolicking or whatever it is we do at 5 in the summer on the weekends. Not coincidentally, the next Globe orgy of trophy-dispensing is scheduled for Sunday, Jan. 17, 2010.

(And, interestingly, Telegdy says there's some preliminary talk about some West Coast NBC stations maybe rerunning the trophy show at 8.)