How to defend ourselves against dubious ‘awards’
’Tis the season to be jolly—especially for so-called winners of dubious TV-film “awards.” There are legit awards and deserving winners, but they are in the distinct minority, since many awards groups have been cropping up to take advantage of the viewing public’s being greatly impressed with show biz honors—and stars’ determination to win by hook or by crook.
What about the clueless viewing public’s welfare? If they implicitly believe that all awardees do excellent and exemplary work, what will be their standards for admirable performances, directing, scripting, hosting, etc.?
And if those standards are flawed or fake, what about the few good artists in the trade how can they be truly and legitimately honored and thanked?
Mind the motives
To defend them and ourselves, those of us who value genuine and deserved touchstones of excellence should be on guard against the many snake-charmers and “fake-charmers” out there and train ourselves to separate the valid from the bogus honor.
To do our bit, we now agree to judge only few legit competitions. We used to judge many more but we stopped, because we didn’t want to legitimize the TV-film competition that don’t give viewers truly reliable standards for excellence.
True lovers, supporters and upholders of genuinely superior TV-film productions should do the same, or else they’ll be playing into the hands of groups that hand out awards for all the wrong reasons.
If we can’t tell the dubious from the deserved honor, we will end up as the questionable awards groups’ stooges and lapdogs. Who would want to be used and abused in such a demeaning way?
Why do the dubious groups come up with TV-film awards? Some of them may have the best motives in the world—to support and honor excellent work—but their members haven’t been adequately trained to do the job astutely.
So, many of their citations go to the wrong people, personalities who appear to do good work, but actually have self-serving motives and wouldn’t recognize excellence even if it bit them in the behind.
Other groups are less clueless and inept, but have perverted their selection process so that their prized “honors” can go to the highest bidders.
A third group doesn’t even bother to select their “winners” properly or comprehensively and instead of viewing all of the deserving or eligible productions, they watch only a few of them, or go by the “suggestions” of “experts” who turn out to be not very knowledgeable at all—and come up with subjective choices mainly to please friends or clients.
See the signs
There is a fourth group that comes up with incredible awards, but it is in the minority. All the more reason, then, for us to learn how to separate their legit choices from the tainted “awards.”
What are those signs of legitimacy and objective reliability? Analyze the group’s membership. If it’s made up of genuine experts who can’t be seduced, induced or bought, that’s a good sign.
Next, look at the group’s track record. Have its past awards held up through the years? Is its selection process truly comprehensive?
If it seeks to honor the best work in the entire year, has it in fact viewed and reviewed the year’s best output—or does it merely go by producers’ picks or only a smattering thereof?
Legit groups are not there to make well-connected stars and producers happy, but to set objective standards of excellence for viewers to believe in and go by—period.
If an awards group meets those rigorous standards, go ahead and believe in its choices.
A good followup is to go out of your way to watch the “winning” productions, and see if you concur with the awards group’s decisions.
What do you do if awards turn out to be dubious, spurious and undeserved?
Take them with a ton of salt, disrespect them—and refuse to allow them to shake the integrity of your hopefully more objective and informed perception.
