Dear Gossips,   

For the first time this weekend, a major award show streamed on Netflix. Prior to this year, the Screen Actors Awards were never broadcast on one of the big networks so you could say that Netflix was giving them their biggest platform. And for Netflix, this was their chance to truly get into a live television format. Did it work? LOL, does it matter? Maybe the better question is: to whom does it matter? 

 

Award show ratings have been steadily declining over the years and every year we’re hearing about new gimmicks and stunts during these productions to try and either reattract the people who used to watch them or attract a new audience, a younger audience, a generation of viewers who’ve been raised on the segmented content model. As we’ve been saying forever here at LaineyGossip, though, the people who are often ignored are the ones who live for award shows, the ones who’ve always been here and aren’t going away. Award show producers aren’t the only ones doing this though – it’s basically everyone on linear television from newscasts to talk shows and more. The goal of every f-cking meeting: how do we get the kids on TikTok to watch TV?! Not the goal of any meeting: how do we reward the people who keep watching us day in and day out and retain that audience, which is actually more valuable since they have clearly been making the investment? 

 

To go back to Netflix’s SAG debut then, there was a lot of TikTok thirst that was on display and while I’m not saying it was all bad, because it wasn’t, and there were a lot of things I liked about the production, every decision was targeted at the wrong audience – or rather, the right audience wasn’t paramount, which prevented the show from really reaching its potential. 

 

The best example of this is how they addressed the “no commercials” part of the program. No commercials doesn’t mean no breaks. You need breaks for a number of reasons – it could be for staging and lighting adjustments, it could simply be to allow guests to go pee or get a drink. In Netflix’s case, according to Kyle Buchanan of the New York Times: 

I’m not entirely sure how this is going to work – like when do the ads actually run for commercial tier subscribers? Before the interview or after? It can’t be after because Tan France always threw it back to the ballroom so I’m assuming before? Or are they going to cut Tan’s interviews completely?

 

For those of you who didn’t watch and are unaware, instead of commercial breaks during the show, it was Tan France backstage interviewing some of the winners and he got a good list: Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and Pedro Pascal who delivered what Netflix was looking for because as he said during his acceptance speech, he was not expecting to win and drank more than he would have if he thought he had a chance, and then proceeded to flirt with Tan and also declared that he would celebrate by making out with Kieran Culkin. Definitely a viral moment but I’m not sure any of the other interviews were. 

And this isn’t about Tan, Tan is great, and he did a good job during the red carpet show with the incomparable Elaine Welteroth, two people the stars clearly could not blow past and so it ended up being that many of the big names stopped to talk to them. But the interview space backstage wasn’t quite as effective. Because it’s about pacing and energy. 

Cutting from a wider shot of the ballroom with the stage and all the celebrities seated in front of it, with the din of a full auditorium in the background to a quiet and dark set where Tan was presiding for their non-commercial but commercial “breaks” interrupted the flow. And it felt weird, at least to me, because we had already left the red carpet and the red carpet style of interviewing – which is standing up, because this happens during the “arrivals”, and then to go back to it felt incongruous. Kinda like starting a meal with a salad, then having half a steak, and suddenly it gets taken away and replaced by another salad for a few minutes before the steak comes back. 

 

What I would suggest, if they insist on this interview format as a “break” during the show, is to not making it standing but to have Tan do the interviews seated instead. Like on two comfortable lounge chairs in a slight V position, facing camera, with maybe a small table for drinks in between them. That might work better for tone, if you lean into the contrast: outside in the ballroom is more formal, backstage after winning it’s more casual, intimate, and that might lend itself to even better interviews. 

But that’s only, as noted, if they persist with this interview thing – which, in my opinion, is not actually the best way to fill the time required for whatever commercial shenanigans Netflix is up to with those breaks. 

The best way is the simplest, and it actually serves both the award show junkies like me and the social media users that everyone is so desperate to attract: just keep the cameras f-cking running in the ballroom, on the celebrities, at their tables, as they get up and talk to each other and socialise and gossip and whatever, just like we see at the Golden Globes right before they cut away to commercials. At the Globes, we only get five to ten seconds of that, max. But if Netflix needs to fill two to three minutes every twenty minutes or so, this is a show that they don’t have to produce, and one that everyone wants to watch. 

Yours in gossip, 

Lainey