A few days ago after the Golden Globe awards I posted this blog asking the question “Is Broadcast TV Dead?” The reason I asked was that no broadcast TV shows were nominated let alone actually win. I made a chart breaking down the awards between streaming services, premium cable such as HBO, Showtime etc., basic cable such as FX, BBC America etc., and broadcast TV. The grand totals for the Golden Globes were as follows:
Streaming 31 nominations, 5 wins. Premium 18 nominations, 5 wins. Basic Cable 8 nominations, 1 win. And as mentioned Broadcast TV 0 for 0.
Last night the Screen Actors Guild awards were presented and the results were only trivially better. Broadcast TV only earned one nomination for Actor in a Drama Series for Sterling K. Brown in “This Is Us“. He lost to Peter Dinklage for “Game of Thrones“. Click here to see a complete list of nominees and winners. Here is a chart I put together showing how the nominations were split up among various kinds of media. A “w” in a column designates that’s the category for the winner.
| Category | Streaming | Premium | Basic | Broadcast |
| Ensemble Comedy Series | 3w | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Ensemble Drama Series | 3w | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Actor Comedy Series | 4w | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Actress Comedy Series | 4w | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Actor Drama Series | 3 | 1w | 0 | 1 |
| Actress Drama Series | 4w | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Actress Movie or Limited | 3 | 1 | 1w | 0 |
| Actor Movie or Limited | 1 | 3 | 1w | 0 |
| Totals | 25 | 9 | 5 | 1 |
| Wins | 5 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
As you can see only one nomination for a broadcast TV show and it did not win. Nothing for a traditional live audience sitcom in the comedy category. Even basic cable was only represented by 3 networks with only 3 shows nominated.
The only conclusion that we can draw from this information is that if you want to see quality television, you are going to have to pay extra. So we have to ask the question: Is broadcast TV dead? If things don’t change they will be.