CBS Scraps AFI Awards

Every year, the American Film Institute hosts two popular televised specials: the AFI Life Achievement Awards, honoring legends of film, and another show that highlights various aspects of the 20th century’s greatest movies.

But when the AFI, one of the most respected organizations in Hollywood, moved aggressively into the pre-Oscar awards derby this year with its best-of awards show on CBS, the result proved a flop with viewers.

Now, CBS has decided to scrap plans for a second telecast next January. If there is a lesson from AFI’s experience, it is that awards shows have proliferated to the point that the public has difficulty differentiating one from another, and if you plan to broadcast an awards show, you better hope the winners show up.

The Jan. 5 AFI Awards telecast, which honored the year’s top achievements in film and television with a swank dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel, ranked a dismal 72nd in the Nielsen ratings and garnered a mere 5.5 million viewers. The show ranked behind competing programming on the three other broadcast networks, ABC, NBC and Fox.

Although a number of film and TV stars turned out for the stately dinner, including Dustin Hoffman, Michelle Pfeiffer and Samuel L. Jackson, as well as Halle Berry and Ron Howard, who would go on to win Oscars for best actress and director, respectively, the AFI show had an embarrassing number of no-show winners such as Denzel Washington, Robert Altman, Gene Hackman, Jennifer Connelly and James Gandolfini.

“The AFI fell on their face because they couldn’t deliver the talent,” said Joey Berlin, president of the 186-member Broadcast Film Critics Assn., which will again hold its own Critics Choice Awards on Jan. 16 with E! Entertainment televising the banquet the following night.

“The AFI is a fabulous organization, and they do wonderful work with their ‘100 Greatest’ specials and their honors for individual achievement, but it seemed odd for them to go into the awards-winning business,” Berlin said.

“You need to build on a solid foundation and grow from that,” he added, noting that this will be his group’s third awards telecast but eighth awards banquet.

Carlos de Abreu, founder of the Hollywood Film Festival, which has managed in six short years to attract significant stars and filmmakers to his untelevised gala awards show at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, said the AFI should have foregone TV until the awards built a following.

“I think it was sad that what they did was so rushed that it didn’t happen,” he said. “They should have matured it a little bit but they wanted to raise money for the institute.”

AFI Chief Notes Hurdles

Jean Picker Firstenberg, the AFI’s director and CEO, conceded that the show required a more solid footing before jumping into television, but she remains proud of the effort. One of the biggest hurdles the AFI faced, she said, was mounting the production so near the Christmas holiday season, when many celebrities and filmmakers are out of town.

“We tried to do this, but the timing was extremely difficult,” Firstenberg said. “We announced [our nominees] on Dec. 17 and everybody was leaving Dec. 21 for the holidays.”

She said the forum for announcing the 2002 winners will be a luncheon on Jan. 16. Although it will not be televised, the event will feature invited actors, directors and producers of the nominated films and TV shows.

As before, the AFI will select the 10 most outstanding movies and TV shows of the year--announced in alphabetical order--and up to 10 “significant moments” from the calendar year that affected the world of the moving image.

“I think we feel very good about the goal” of the AFI Awards, Firstenberg said Thursday. “We’re just going to continue to evolve it so that it has a really strong foundation and continues to build its credibility.”

Tom O’Neil, author of “Movie Awards” and host of the show business awards Web site GoldDerby.com, said the AFI’s show was a noble effort but failed because “it looked too much like a poor man’s Golden Globes.”

“It was a dull show,” he said. “It was not staged with any classic show-biz pizazz. It may be there is room in the prime-time schedule [for more awards shows], if they are entertaining like the Grammys or the MTV Video Music Awards. A lot of these shows know how to put on a show and be lively. To have one more show full of serious acceptance speeches is dull.”

Crowded Awards Season

O’Neil noted that between November and April each year, there is at least one awards show a week in prime time. “It’s possible the viewers are saying enough is enough. People finally said about this new one, ‘We don’t care.’ ”

Ironically, the AFI Awards telecast may have boosted Denzel Washington’s Oscar chances. He went on to win the best actor Academy Award for his role as a corrupt cop in “Training Day.”

Washington lost to Russell Crowe, the star of “A Beautiful Mind,” at this year’s Golden Globes and at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. The only time he was honored on national TV, O’Neil noted, was at the AFI Awards. “Denzel had a lot of other strikes against him, too--including playing a villainous role, the kind you never win Oscars for. But he pulled it off. How? Surely, that early push from the AFI helped--it was the stamp of legitimacy he needed.”

CBS spokesman Chris Ender said Thursday that the network is not looking to find another awards show at this time. “We are very happy with our current crop, which includes the Grammys, the People’s Choice Awards, the Country Music Assn. Awards and the Academy of Country Music Awards.”

He added: “We’ve had a great relationship with the AFI and still plan on doing our summer movie countdown specials with them.”