The Envelope’s Tom O’Neil reported this morning that instead of broadcasting some kind of stately upmarket press conference announcing the Golden Globes winners (in place of the awards show that has been 86-ed due to the WGA strike), NBC intends to have their Stepford Showbiz News duo from Access Hollywood — i.e., the alpha- smiley Billy Bush and Nancy O’Dell — hand out the awards within a kind of “Wheee! Let’s have fun!” pseudo-news event.

Billy Bush, Nancy O’Dell

I don’t know that NBC has locked the Access Hollywood decision, but O’Neil reports that “when word leaked out early Wednesday that NBC wanted Bush and O’Dell to host the one-hour special Sunday night, a top Golden Globe consultant told me, ‘The HFPA will never permit it!'”
Talk about a degradation Talk about an ick factor. The Golden Globes have always been a kind of boutique hotel chain compared to the Oscars’ Plaza or Carlyle pedigree, but they’ve been around for decades and have helped a lot of deserving people get the meritorious attention and career boosts that they deserve, blah, blah. They’re not Tiffany class, but to have their usual glitzy awards ceremony replaced by a desperate awards-handout ratings grab starring a pair of cheap entertainment news whores — copy readers with pasted-on smiles and robotic personalities who would be perfectly cast as sedative-dispensing orderlies in a re-do of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest — is a real comedown.
“Only reluctantly did HFPA agree earlier this week to NBC’s plan for a televised press conference to announce winners in place of its usual awards banquet proceeding without TV coverage,” O’Neil writes.

“In both cases, HFPA loses the $5 million fee it normally gets from NBC to telecast the dinner ceremony. Many members wanted the usual gala to proceed so that it would send the message that HFPA cares less about its TV show than gathering the titans of Hollywood together in order to reward their best film and TV work of the year.
“But NBC had pre-sold more than $20 million in advertising and pressured HFPA to accept some form of substitute program.
“HFPA leaders caved under network pressure only when assured that the TV show would be a serious press conference produced by NBC’s news division. They never thought they’d get stuck with ‘a puff show’ with Billy Bush and Nancy O’Dell, says a source. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has enough trouble being taken seriously by some media observers who criticize the freelance status of many members. It’s doubtful that the group would’ve agreed to this plan if NBC had been clear up front, is the sentiment I understand is now coming from the HFPA camp.
“‘The show isn’t a real press conference,’ a veteran TV producer told O’Neil. ‘It doesn’t look like [the] journalists present will be able to ask questions of Golden Globe officials. They’ll be there as captives to watch Billy and Nancy read off nominees and winners in 25 award categories.'”