Time's Up CEO hits 'manifested racism' of Golden Globes, HFPA amid backlash

Yahoo Finance's Alexandra Canal breaks down the controversy surrounding the Golden Globes and HFPA as NBC cancels 2022's telecast.

Video transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. In this week's Fame and Fortune, the news rippling through Hollywood after NBC says that it will be canceling coverage of the Golden Globes moving forward, citing diversity concerns there. And for more on that, I want to bring on Yahoo Finance's Alexandra Canal. And Allie, we were talking about this because diversity is the issue that NBC's pointing to. But we would be remiss if we didn't point out that some of these awards show ratings have been dropping recently.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Across the board, Zack. Especially this year amid COVID-19, all of the award shows coming down pretty significantly. But let's first get into this diversity conflict that's been happening with the Golden Globes. This is all centering around the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which is an 86-member group that doles out the Annual Golden Globe Awards. Now, if you remember, just days before this year's awards show, the LA Times published a scathing exposé detailing allegations of bullying, corruption, and self-dealing. In addition, the report found that out of all of the members of the HFPA, not one of them is Black. And it's been like that for quite some time. So there was a big push and call for reform.

Fast forward to May 6, and the HFPA laid out a proposal for things that they are going to try to do better. That included increasing membership by 50% over the next 18 months, adding a CEO, adding in a diversity clause. However, for a lot of people, this was just way too little, way too late. And then we had big production houses, including Netflix, Warner Media, Amazon, boycotting the show, in addition to some big name actors and actresses from Tom Cruise, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, and then, as you mentioned, NBC just came out there and completely canceled next year's telecast.

And then, earlier this week, we did get a chance to speak with Time's Up CEO Tina Chen. She said that these proposals just don't even touch the surface of what they needed to do. So here's more of what she had to say.

TINA CHEN: One of the ways they manifested sort of racism in their decision making, not just in their membership, happened this year. One of the biggest films of the year is "Minari," which is a story about an Asian-American family in middle America. And yet, the Golden Globes put it into their foreign language category.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Yeah, and that decision led to a public outcry. It was an American production with an American filmmaker. And yet, the HFPA labeled it as a foreign language film. So all of that did not bode well here. But you did mention ratings, and I just want to pull up this full screen because the numbers are pretty astounding. For this year's telecast, only 6.9 million viewers tuned in. That's about a 63% drop from 2020. So I'm sure it was no skin off NBC's back to just cancel this altogether. Obviously, the diversity issue, but also a big ratings issue as well.

AKIKO FUJITA: So Allie, that begs the question, how big of a bump did these films actually get, if not a whole lot of people watched the award shows? I mean, what are you finding there in terms of streaming numbers for movies like "Nomadland" that did rack up those awards?

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Yeah, normally, we see this post-streaming bump play out in the box office. Obviously, that did not happen due to COVID-19. But we actually did see some streaming data come out that shows a bump in viewership after certain titles won these awards. Let's start with "Nomadland." They won Best Picture, along with Best Director, Best Actress. That's a 4.1 times more streams after those wins. Also seeing a bit of a boost post-Golden Globe win, but nothing compared to that Oscars bump.

Meanwhile, if we take a look at "Mank," which actually came into the Oscars with the most nominations, they enjoyed a much stronger boost in viewing after news of those nominations broke, compared to when it actually came and won two out of those 10 awards. So definitely here, we're seeing more of a post-nomination bump, rather than a post-win bump. And then, finally, if we take a look at some of the TV series that benefited from Golden Globe wins and nominations, you'll see that "I Know This Much is True," "Small Axe," both of those titles soaring in viewership after those wins. And even the Apple TV Plus breakout series, "Ted Lasso," seeing a nice little pop there as well.

So at least people are out there. They're paying attention to who and what is nominated. But this is all something that is going to continue to be in conversation. And I'm very excited because next week, we have an extended Fame and Fortune. I'll be speaking to a lot of thought leaders in the space, a lot of industry executives, including Tom Ryan, who's the head of streaming for Viacom CBS and Paramount Plus, Richard Gelfond, IMAX CEO, Tika Sumpter, who's an actress, and James Lopez, president of Will Packer Productions, and even more. So make sure to tune in next week between 4:00 and 5:00 PM for all of those conversations.

AKIKO FUJITA: OK, looking forward to that. Allie, thanks so much for that.