Catching some of last night’s People’s Choice Awards it became rather easy to pick the winners. If the nominee was in attendance, they probably won.
Do the winners know before hand that they’ve won? Maybe called ahead of time and asked “Would you like to attend the PCAs to accept your prize?”
A lot of the other nominees who didn’t win were noticably absent.
I think it goes like this…
“Did Clint Eastwood show up?”
“No.”
“Brad Pitt?”
“No.”
“George Clooney?”
“No.”
“Jamie Foxx?”
“Yes, he’s here.”
“Winner!”
Yes, it’s pretty obvious the winners KNEW they’d be the winners, and wouldn’t have shown up otherwise.
The People’s Choice award isn’t as prestigious as the Oscars or Grammies ,and it’s NOT “an honor just to be nominated.”
Tom Hanks wouldn’t show up for the People’s Choice awards if he wasn’t sure he was going to win. If he’s in the audience, take it as a given that he’s the winner, and that he was notified of this long ago.
Good column – thanks for the link.
I was thinking a little about this on the way home.
It’s not really that the winners know ahead of time that’s the problem. The Nobel Prize winners know ahead of time, too. (And the winner of the Peace Prize is . . . Albert Schweitzer! Gasp ---- squee!!! Oh, Professor Curie, you look amazing! Is that Prada?) It’s that they pretend they don’t know. And as Pastorek points out, it’s just so obvious that the winners are there because they know they’ve won.
Until 2005, the voting was handled by a Gallup poll, which probably kept it more or less honest. The people at Gallup didn’t care whether their client was an awards show or a ketchup company. They just called up people and asked them who their favorite male TV star was, and wrote down the answer. (Actually, they gave them a choice of three, but you were allowed to say any name you liked as a write-in.) So if was 1982 and you were asked your favorite female movie star and you said “Sally Field,” then she got a vote. Or Tom Selleck or Mariah Carey or whatever.
I haven’t been able to find out if the winners weren’t notified in the beginning, but the producers found nobody was showing up because it’s a low-profile award so they started notifying the winners in hopes they’d come for a sure thing. I suspect that’s what happened. It wouldn’t seem so bogus if they’d just come clean about it and say, “We took a poll and found that America’s three favorite male movie stars are Will Smith, Harrison Ford and Robert Downey Jr., and overall the favorite is Will Smith, so he’s here to get his award.” There would still be some anticipation for the audience, because they wouldn’t know the outcome, and they would still get to see the star they want to see. The people who aren’t getting awards don’t show up anyway, so what would change except making it less fake?
Since 2005, the Gallup poll has been replaced with internet voting, which means that anyone can vote, instead of only those who are called for a representative sample. Is that better? Maybe, because I’ve never been called, and I might like to be asked my opinion, but it probably means that the voting will skew younger than a genuine “people’s choice.”
There are ratings and sales figures to let the industry know what shows and movies and songs people like best, but I don’t see a big problem with having an awards show to honor them. It’s probably a superfluous show, but the stars can damn well thank the public once in a while. It’s when they deceive the public that it looks like a scam. We’re not that dumb.
Of course, “people’s choice” often rewards stars and shows who have name recognition, even if they’re not REALLY popular.
Example? Some years back, the People’s Choice for Best Male Star in a New TV Series was John Goodman and the Best Female Star in a New TV Series was Bette Midler. Goodman and Midler showed up to accept their awards… months AFTER their low-rated shows had been cancelled.
Several new shows that HAD been very successful that same season got no awards. Why? Because the stars weren’t famous yet. Nobody was watching Midler or Goodman’s shows, but EVERYBODY knew who they were.
(phone rings) Yes, Mr. Mandel, Is that you? Well you have been chosen to receive a people’s choice award. Can you be there to receive it? No? Well, never mind.