The Golden Globe Awards once again have a long-term broadcast home.
CBS announced on Monday that it had signed a five-year deal to broadcast the Globes, providing a much-needed shot in the arm for a program that was on life support not long ago.
The agreement also gives a broader lift to award show telecasts more generally, which had become endangered a few years ago by rapidly changing viewership habits that led to collapsing ratings. Viewership for nearly all the shows has been growing over the past two years.
“CBS’s collaboration with the Globes for this year’s broadcast was a big win for both of us and established strong momentum for awards shows in 2024,” George Cheeks, the president of CBS, said in a statement.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
NBC, the longtime broadcaster of the Globes, gave up the event after several ethics and diversity scandals imperiled the award show. In 2021, The Los Angeles Times reported that the organization that administers the Globes had no Black members, setting off a significant backlash in Hollywood.
NBC refused to broadcast the Globes in 2022, and after it aired the awards show in 2023 for a lower fee (and garnered record low ratings in the process), the broadcast network walked away from the event for good.
This year, CBS decided to broadcast the show on a one-year contract. Although reviews for this year’s ceremony were harsh — Vanity Fair called it a “near-total disaster” — it generated 9.4 million viewers this year, an increase over the low in 2023 of just over six million.
Viewership of the Oscars and the Grammy Awards has also increased since 2022, with both scoring four-year highs in 2024. The Tony Awards had a modest increase last year, too.
Still, the shows are down significantly from where they were a decade ago. And the Emmy Awards have not rebounded at all — scoring a low of 4.3 million viewers in January.
Many industry executives have pinned some of the viewership declines on viewers becoming less tolerant of three-and-a-half hour events packed with repeated commercial breaks. The executives have also pointed to some viewers feeling alienated by the political nature of many winners’ speeches, especially during the Trump administration.
Several television executives have said that the Emmys, in particular, has suffered from not having a dedicated broadcaster that can invest heavily in the event, with the show rotating among the four broadcast networks each year.
CBS can now aggressively market the Globes going forward.
“The Globes is a one-of-a-kind live event that adds another marquee special and valuable promotional platform to CBS’s annual calendar,” Mr. Cheeks, the CBS president, said on Monday.
