It's time for the Tony Awards and CBS to part ways

Yesterday, it was announced that the Tony Awards would finally be presented before the beginning of 2022. On September 26th, the three major show awards(Best Musical, Best Play, Best Revival of a Play) would be announced during a special concert airing on CBS at 9 pm. However, the bulk of the awards would be handed out, in some fashion, on the network’s streaming service Paramount+. This will be the first time in decades that the entire awards ceremony won’t be aired in one single broadcast.

While there are some supportive arguments as to why CBS opted to change the Tony Awards format this year, it’s understandable that many fans and theatrical artists feel a be stung that the bulk of these awards are behind a paywall subscription to a sub-par streaming service.

If this is how CBS values the Tony Awards, it may be time for the American Theatre Wing(ATW) and the network to go their separate ways.

When the announcement of the Tony Awards plan was released, at first I was confused but then as the pieces fell together, it started to make sense. While no one has officially stated this, I feel that the ATW had zero leverage whatsoever to rebut CBS’s proposal for the awards this year. I think this was more of the network saying “take it or leave it” and the ATW not having any chips ar the bargaining table.

Taking into account that the ceremony is an annual money loser for the network already, add to that the fact that the shows featured haven’t been seen in 14 months and there’s not much the ATW could show to prove a three-hour Sunday night ceremony would be justified. Even when the industry was active, the ratings for the show have been slipping every year since CBS and the ATW renewed their contract after the ratings-high 2016 ceremony which featured the crossover hit “Hamilton”.

But even with the biggest pop culture musical to hit since “The Producers”, that broadcast only mustered 8.7 million viewers which was a fifteen-year high since the 2001 ceremony where the Mel Brook musical swept their categories. Ever since the ratings have been down and the 2019 broadcast was at an all-time low of 5.6 million viewers.

Now add the fact that a Sept 26th broadcast puts them directly in competition with NFL Sunday Night Football, and the Tony Award stock sinks even lower.

If the plan was always going to be just a couple of performances and then airing the rest on Paramount+, then why didn’t this happen sooner? Who knows.

The current contract between CBS and the ATW expires in 2026, but it might be a good idea to part ways sooner than that. Given the ratings slips and money lost for the network, there’s no reason for CBS to hold onto this awards show. Yes, the awards have always been a commercial for the industry, but the rewards for the network have been decreasing for years.

And for the ATW, they lost their biggest ally with the firing of former CBS head honcho Les Moonves over his alleged sexual misconduct. Moonves had previously stated that as long as he was at CBS, so would the Tonys. Now he’s gone and the Tonys doesn’t have an executive cheerleader anymore.

So what is the solution? How can the ATW make the Tony Awards a desirable broadcast for networks? Should they even go the network route anymore? Tough questions to answer.

For me, I’d like CBS and the ATW to mutually part ways, they both had a good run with each other but it’s time to move on. If there’s interest, ABC might be a good partner. They already produce the Oscars and are owned by Disney who has a presence on Broadway. NBC could also be a good partner seeing as they have a large NYC presence. PBS was a former home the awards and while it certainly didn’t give the awards the publicity that the major networks could, at least we got to see the entire ceremony aired. Also, if streaming networks are an option, Netflix or even Amazon might be interested in having an exclusive awards show in their portfolio.

But either way, the Tonys needs to find a new home. It feels as though the two sides want to separate and are just going through the motions. If that’s the case, this can’t continue for another five years.