GRAMMYS: “THE NON-AWARDS AWARDS TELECAST”

In recent years, producers of the Grammy Awards show have made it more about the performances during the show itself than about the recordings that receive award recognition. Virtually throughout its existence, there have been complaints that the majority of Grammy voters are oldtimers who probably go “eeny-meeny-miny-moe” when considering some of the names on their ballots. On Sunday’s CBS telecast the producers kept the pace fast enough so that people at home would not have a chance to do much head scratching when, for example, Esperanza Spalding was announced as the winner of the best new artist award. (She’s a jazz singer.) Indeed several critics pointed out that in the first hour of the 3 1/2-hour telecast, only one award was handed out. The Grammys, Brian Lowry pointed out in Daily Variety have “morphed into the non-awards awards telecast.” Live blogging the show for the New York Observer, Daniel D’Addario had this appraisal of the top awards winners: “A good night for adult-contemporary radio. But isn’t it always thus?” A.P. television writer David Bauder summed up: “Much like the music world itself, the Grammy Awards is a colorful train wreck of a television show.” But Ben Sisario in the New York Times suggested that one of the goals of the producers was to put it back on track. “With the music industry suffering from a decade-long sales slump, the Grammy ceremony is more important than ever, offering a night of prime-time TV glamour and valuable promotion.”