No Rock And Roll Fun

WHO SAW THE GRAMMYS?: Not that many people - the US telecast of the way-too-long awards show managed just 18.8 million, which was down from last year's audience by 28 per cent - although in the post-jackson nipple era, 2004 saw a boost from people eager to see what that crazy pop world would do next. It's the lowest audience for the prize giving since 1995. CBS seem perplexed as to why nobody cared:

"This was the show to beat in terms of how it was produced," said Shari Anne Brill, a television analyst for Carat USA. "It was just great. It wasn't about someone handing out awards. It was about performances. Viewers who didn't tune in missed a treat."

ITV2 carried it last time in peak time, and to be honest, after a couple of minutes we were back surfing away elsewhere. It wasn't helped that the show hadn't been edited down to fit its two hour slot - it had just been randomly chopped, so Queen Latifah started a sentence welcoming everyone to the awards and ended it talking about Art Blakey; at one point, the screen filled for two seconds with a close up of Cyndi Lauper with her name on a caption before she disappeared again. And the performances weren't up to much: Green Day, after nearly convincing us at the Brits, were back to sounding like your dad doing punk; U2 elected to avoid any sort of spectacle at all (although Larry apologised again for the ticket screw-up, which was honorable and impressed us). But really, the whole thing just seemed like a dull splodge. It's more a puzzle how they managed to get 18 million to stick with it.

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