The Last Word On Nothing

Dear TV Executives:

I hear you’re desperate to get people to watch your channels in real time these days. Apparently I’m not the only one who waits for everything to come out on Netflix. As a result, I heard on NPR yesterday, you’re televising more and more shows that people prefer to watch live, like award shows. It’s not just the Grammies and the Oscars anymore. NBC is reviving the American Comedy Awards. The Hallmark Channel has the Hero Dog Awards, of all things.

Let me propose to you an untapped source of live events: science writing awards.

To research this proposal, last night I joined in the “fun” by watching the Golden Globes. I don’t know if you watched them, my dear TV executives, but they were really boring. Flat jokes from teleprompters about movies I haven’t seen. Endless nominations of miniseries on premium cable channels. No George Clooney. People at a variety of fame levels being charmingly shocked.

Ok, I take that back. Charming shock can be great, like when Jennifer Lawrence adorably freaked out and told the Hollywood Foreign Press Association never to do this to her again. But there were long, dull stretches between the moments of charm.

Science writers can offer something to fill those stretches: better-written speeches. Sure, we aren’t as hot as actors, but we’re pretty interesting. We know our way around an anecdote. We also don’t have to thank big teams; you’ve got your editor, your family, maybe an agent or barista.

And think of all the money to be made by bundling all the nominated stories and selling them as Kindle Singles or something.

I propose you start with two awards shows. The National Association of Science Writers gives out the NASW Science in Society Awards every fall. In February, it’s the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards, presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

If those shows are hits–and how could they not be–you can branch out to the awards given out by the American Institute of Physics or the American Society for Microbiology, plus, for an audience with a shorter attention span, the D.C. Science Writers News Briefs Award.

We already drink at awards nights, just like the actors at the Golden Globes. So you might get some drunk speeches. I imagine you could even use your clout, dear TV executives, to get us booked into an auditorium where we’re allowed to bring the drinks in.

Of course, the clothing would be different from what you see in Hollywood. Lots of jeans–although, in our defense, they’d probably be the nice jeans. Give it a few years, though; the vendors who sell fossil jewelry at geology conferences would start lending us their finest ammonite brooches. The North Face and Patagonia could give us jackets for the red carpet, particularly for the AAAS meeting, which is held in February, often in cold places.

You’d have opportunities for advertising. Some writers might wear t-shirts from the finest science writing outlets. And you know how the Golden Globes went from Diane Keaton’s long, weird speech about Woody Allen straight into a L’Oreal ad in which she danced around and talked about cosmetics? Imagine this: I give a speech blabbering about an editor who was nice to me (no shortage of candidates), then you cut to a commercial in which Christie and I dance around waving our Planner Pads.

If you want to talk to me about it, I’ll be at AAAS in Chicago this February. Look for the freelancer walking the red carpet in the silver-and-trilobite necklace and vintage REI.

photo: Shutterstock