The Problem with the Penske Monopoly on the Awards Race

A fresh new scandal has erupted in Penske Town. Apparently, the Penske-owned Golden Globes are now offering movie studios a sit-down with many of their members hosted by the Penske-owned Variety. It will look like a fairly standard Q&A after any screening in the business. But there will be a dollar sign attached and an implicit directive to nominate the contenders from that film.

The Globes voters are not obligated, of course, but there are worse things than an intimate chit-chat with movie stars. This was exactly the kind of thing the Globes got into trouble about before. Publicists who don’t have that kind of leverage can’t get their clients up close and personal with, say, George Clooney or Kate Winslet. Therefore, the game is unfair, rigged some might say.

All of this comes from “What I’m Hearing” column by Matt Belloni over at Puck – and was tweeted out by the New York Times’ Kyle Buchanan:

So, is this a scandal? Well no because the Penske empire is a monopoly so it will never become a story. Maybe the New York Times is working on something investigative but at the moment, we have a bit of a William Randolph Hearst situation here. The only upside for Penske is that these are such low stakes. The only people who might get worked up about it are the publicists who can’t pay to play.

Otherwise, it’s business as usual in the Oscar game where money and access decide the race. Getting a Golden Globe nomination is an honor in its own right, whether it takes you farther down to the ultimate prize, the Oscar. Publicists have to deliver for their clients and their clients often need awards now to position themselves as valuable in what is very likely a collapsing industry.

Box office used to do the trick, but the box office, well, needs Viagra or something like it to bring people to the movies. Every so often, one sells now, but for the most part, people aren’t watching. I could explain why — and will over the coming months — but let’s stick with this. How bad is the whoring in whore town? Pretty bad. Has anything changed in the 25 years I’ve been covering the race? Nope.

For most people who cover film awards they think: it’s nice work if you can get it. If you can get an ad buy for doing nothing more than an interview or an advocacy piece, why not? Pays the bills. Where’s the harm? Think: Quiz Show:

When I first started in 1999, the only magazines that earned the FYC ad money were Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. I used to collect FYC Ads in a gallery but stopped doing so when others copied me and built their own. For a long time, I dutifully posted those beautiful ads because they mostly appeared nowhere else.

David Poland’s now-defunct Movie City News was the first online site to start earning money with Oscar ads. He took me to other smaller sites to make more money from the studios. When I met David Carr of the New York Times, he encouraged me to start pitching solo. “You’re working as a janitor,” he said bluntly, “how much worse can it get?”

Then, all the sites started making money off FYC ads. And from there, a massive industry of “Oscarwatching” sprouted up. Now it wasn’t just the trades or the blogs. It was billboards. It was the Cinematographers Guild. It was Vanity Fair and the New York Times. Studios had millions to splash around to find the right places to influence Academy voters.

Is pay to play a problem for the Golden Globes and the Penske brand? Maybe if the stakes were higher. What I think is a bigger problem is the need to keep the click count high. The headlines are becoming more and more sensationalized by the day. Even the hit piece on Yours Truly, which was “surveillance journalism” seemed like shitty clickbait to me. They can’t report on any real stories so they have to traffic in sleaze and gossip.

Don’t get me wrong. There are still good writers over there. Our good friends Jazz Tangcay and Clayton Davis, among others. There are still some good critics and the Oscar coverage isn’t bad. But think about it. Penske owns Gold Derby. The Oscar predictions on Gold Derby tend to decide the race. So it all becomes a snake eating its own tail. And this would be bad if, you know, the stakes were higher.

Because there is a climate of fear and they can’t tell the truth about anything — there isn’t a lot of sexy content to be found. The Penske-owned Rolling Stone has become a shell of its former self. It’s nothing more than an offshoot of yet another Democrat-leaning outlet, of which there are far too many. All of that subversive content from the old days has been wiped clean.

There is nothing ethical about the awards race. There never was. The only thing Jay Penske did is not pretend otherwise. He essentially says that he knows it’s a game of money so fuck you, pay me.

My fellow bloggers would be wise to watch their backs. A Penske reporter took down my site, at least it looks that way, by writing a hit piece on me. So if Penske is worried about anyone else getting a piece of the pie, even a teeny tiny slice, well, all he has to do is start knocking out the competition.

The Oscar race itself is a rigged game, and everyone knows it. That’s why movies with no business being named Best Picture of the Year get into the race, and no one remembers them the following year. Gone are the days when The Godfather was winning Best Picture or even Titanic. Most people outside the bubble of Hollywood realize this. Maybe some inside realize it, too.

Can it be fixed? Well, no. Not in the current state of the business. Theatrical is dying. There is a creative bottleneck in Hollywood because Hollywood is married to the Democratic Party and has a kind of boring monoculture going on. My own theory is that if Trump wins, the delusion shatters and Hollywood can get back to the business of telling good stories again. But if Harris wins, we prolong the agony.

Either way, the only way the Oscars can thrive is if the iflm industry thrives and right now that’s not really possible. They’ve lost their audience. We’re probably just a couple of years away from the Oscars heading to streaming and being more of an international hub rather than a way for Hollywood to bring people to the movies, which is what they were designed to do oh so long ago.

The Oscars are heading into their 100th year. They might say, well, we had a good run. Now it’s time to close the doors and bid all goodnight. But man, Penske better find a Plan B if that’s the case. All that filthy lucre is going to vanish in an instant.

To keep the money train going, the Oscars would have to relinquish their devotion to theatrical and become more like the Emmys, with their main focus on streaming. Will the awards have the same value they once had? That’s a tough question to answer. In the short run, sure. In the long run? I don’t know.

We have too many award shows, too many critics awards, too many people covering the awards race and need more great movies to fill it up. At least this year, we don’t have a bustling industry that is competitive enough to justify giving out awards in the first place.

One thing the Academy could do today was reduce Best Picture down from ten to five. That would slow the money train for sure, but it would likely help save the Oscars.

Then again, maybe Penske will up and buy the Oscars too and then studios don’t have to bother with the wine and dine. They can just cut him checks directly.