Showbiz Sandbox 563: The Grammy Nominations Are Bigger and More Baffling Than Ever
November 30, 2021
When this year’s Grammy nominations were announced last week the Recording Academy made a last minute decision to expand some of its biggest categories from eight to 10 nominees. This allowed popular artists like Taylor Swift, Kanye West and Lil Nas X to be included in this year’s list. While this generates a small amount of grumbling, we discuss why it may not be such a bad move.
Meanwhile the Thanksgiving weekend helped the worldwide box office continue to recover from the ongoing pandemic. Still some industry watchers are dismayed that popular releases like Disney’s “Encanto” and the latest “Ghostbusters” aren’t opening to bigger numbers. Though, when you have studios claiming blockbusters such as the Queen biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” are still in the red after earning nearly a billion dollars, would it really matter if they doubled their opening weekend gross?
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment headlines including how Adele got Spotify to stop shuffling around, The Weeknd breaks a long-standing record on the music charts and Netflix (sort of) becomes more transparent with viewership data.
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Showbiz Sandbox 136: Crafting A Story For The Grammys Through Triumph and Tragedy
February 13, 2012
Los Angeles Times entertainment reporter Geoff Boucher was on assignment at the Grammy Awards when he heard about the the sudden death of pop star Whitney Houston over the weekend. While still covering music’s biggest night, Boucher was given two hours to write Houston’s obituary for the Sunday paper.
At the same time, David Wild was backstage at the Grammys putting the finishing touches on his script for the telecast. A contributing editor at Rolling Stone and best-selling author, Wild had less than 24-hours to work with Grammys producer Ken Ehrlich and revise the awards in the wake of Houston’s passing.
After an exhausting weekend Boucher and Wild join us to discuss how this year’s Grammys focused on two voices; one looking to the future with Adele winning six awards and one honoring the past by mourning the fresh tragedy of Houston’s death.
A whopping 40 million people watched this year’s Grammys telecast, though if we were to believe Nielsen few of them were under the age of 24. Brian Stelter of the New York Times stops by to explain why young people are watching television less often.
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