As I type, BBC1’s coverage of the BAFTA awards has just started on BBC1. We have Stephen Fry hosting again this year. The show started at 9pm.
But here’s the thing.
I already know many of the winners. Or at least, it’s not hard for me to find out. If I wander over to my Twitter stream
Sometime around 8.10pm the BBC Breaking News Twitter alerted me to one of the first big winners. If I tell you that the BBC Breaking News account is one of the accounts I still have forwarded as texts to my phone, you begin to understand my annoyance. It becomes almost impossible to avoid.
Indeed, it reminds me of that classic episode of Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads where Bob and Terry try to avoid learning a football score ahead of the highlights airing on television.
Exactly when it starts in reality, I’m not sure. E! TV’s red carpet coverage aired pre-6pm, and the betting sites closed around the same time.
I know what happens is that the production company carefully edit out all the early craft awards so we can learn those winners later, under the end the credits. And obviously any naughty language can be spliced out too.
But that’s not good enough.
In the 21st century, either run the awards live, or don’t bother.
Start the awards at 8pm and give out the craft awards. Have a break, and then return at 9pm live for the main show, on a thirty second delay if need be, although putting the awards out post-watershed, and giving a stern warning about language to all there should suffice. Nobody cares if you run a bit late. Awards shows always do.
I note that Grammys, Emmys, Brits and Oscars all go out live.
In the scheme of things, I don’t even care that much. But this feels like such a nannyish way of doing things.
When Awards Ignore Social Media
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2 responses to “When Awards Ignore Social Media”
But you have to think about the actual product you’re putting on TV, at over three hours long each year The Oscars are incredibly dull to actually sit down and watch. A nice 2-hour show with the lesser awards done in a round-up at the end and any dull speeches chopped down is far better than others, there were plenty of things trimmed tonight and it made it a better show, shame about Stephen Fry being a completely underwhelming host.
Not much help now but it was clear that the BBC and other news outlets were going to report on the winners as they happened, the simple solution was to avoid Twitter and the news channels/websites for a couple of hours. Poor Bob and Terry had to go all day and night, this was a couple of hours.
Your solution doesn’t really work, what if everyone took ages to do their speeches between 8 and 9? Do you start the live BBC One show with a load of lesser awards or somehow postpone them until after you’re off air again? It wouldn’t work.
Seeing as they show pretty much the entire second half of the BAFTA programme anyway, it really wouldn’t make much odds. You’d still edit the early awards (personally I find these more interesting than the luvvies towards the end).
The Brits manage to be live. As do many other awards ceremonies, without being dull. That’s just a feature of producing them correctly.
The Oscars are overlong because of fatuous and unfunny set pieces, too many songs, and generally poor production. Dishing up the awards and the handful of speeches takes very little of the running time.