'Dancing With The Stars' Season 14 Dream Casting
'Happy Endings' Scoop: James Wolk On Being Max's Valentine
No! More! Round! Stages!
For the first time in a long time I watched the entire Emmy broadcast on Sunday. I'm usually not into these types of awards show, but I thought I'd tune in since I do write about television from time to time. For the most part I didn't think it was that bad. Ryan Seacrest didn't embarrass himself as much as I thought he would, the presenters weren't that corny when it came time to read the cue cards, and the musical numbers were good (I liked the set by the Jersey Boys the most). I only had one real problem with the show. A problem that I'm guessing most of the presenters, award winners, audience members, and viewers had as well . . .
The theater-in-the-round stage.
I don't know who thought of this idea, but it was a very bad one. A round stage is good for plays like Hamlet, where the actors roam about the area. It's not good for awards shows where one part of the audience always sees your front and the other one has a wonderful view of your ass (although I'm sure there were members of the audience who were very happy with their ass-viewing seats). Award shows are static, not fluid like a performance of Stomp!.
Perhaps, if they had rotated the position where the presenters and winners came up to speak, so people on stage would face one side of the audience for a bit and then the other side, this complaint would not have happened. But, the microphone stayed in one place throughout the entire show. Would it have been that difficult to place a microphone at each side? Or, maybe four mike stands, since the audience members along the side would have like to seen a full profile of the people up on stage.
Maybe the producers thought it brought about a more personal feeling to the Emmys. Something akin to the casual feeling you get at the Golden Globes, perhaps. If anything, the result was just the opposite: it made the ass-viewing audience members envy what the front-facing audience members were seeing. It reminded me of that Dr. Seuss story The Sneetches. The front-facing audience members were the Sneetches with stars on their bellies, and the ass-viewing audience members were the Sneetches without stars.
You want to make the Emmy awards more intimate? Fine, then make it a square stage, have all of the audience facing front, and cut the amount of people invited down from six thousand to about 100. Or, you can have it at a Las Vegas hotel and present individual awards in different suites across the resort. Heck, that worked so well for MTV's Video Music Awards.
14 Comments