The 74th Annual Tony Awards (2021) - News & Discussion Thread — Page 13

Chrishuyen, you didn't imagine that. Here's a 2017 Playbill article that says: ''Starting next season, a select subset of voters will vote in these [Sound] categories—as well as Best Orchestrations—based on their trade.''

https://www.playbill.com/article/the-tony-awards-will-reinstate-the-best-sound-design-categories

From the Variety article posted recently, I think it's important to highlight this:

All four hours will be streamed on Paramount Plus, with the final two hours also live on CBS.

“We sat down and creatively challenged ourselves to figure out how do we bring the full power of the new ViacomCBS to the Tony Awards,” said Jack Sussman, CBS Entertainment exec VP of specials, music, live events and alternative programming. “It’s kind of like the real time, contemporary version of what everybody’s calling ‘convergent media.’ That brought Paramount Plus and CBS together. For what used to be a three-hour broadcast telecast, we’re now embracing this new linear and streaming combined ecosystem.”

Audra McDonald is hosting the awards-heavy two hours, followed by Leslie Odom Jr. handling hosting duties for the concert event.

Among the performances throughout the evening: David Byrne and the cast of “American Utopia”; John Legend and the cast of “Ain’t Too Proud”; McDonald and Brian Stokes Mitchell performing a duet from “Ragtime”; Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth with music from “Wicked”; and a reunion of the cast members of “Hairspray,” including Marissa Jaret Winokur and Matthew Morrison. The telecast will close with the cast of “Freestyle Love Supreme,” including Lin-Manuel Miranda.

The primetime special will also feature performances from the three Tony-nominated best musical contenders, “Jagged Little Pill,” “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” and “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical.”

Kirshner said the Paramount Plus portion will include between 20 to 25 awards. “We want to be really clear that it is a full-on awards show,” he said. “We have Jennifer Nettles doing a song from her Broadway album. We have Jennifer Holliday celebrating the 40th anniversary of ‘Dreamgirls.’ There’s a lot of misinformation out there. In the past, a lot of these awards have been in a pre-show where they got a 10 second blurb on the air. Now they get their full award on the air...”

"We're more audience-friendly concert in primetime, came out of this unusual year and the desire to add more entertainment elements to the CBS broadcast. But it could also serve as a template for how awards shows might be reimagined in the future. Sussman wasn’t ready to go that far, but said each event would be analyzed on an individual basis.

“We’re going to move forward on an individual basis, show by show event by event, what’s the best plan, and how do we do the best job possible to make sure that more people on whatever platform they choose to watch it on, watch the events that were partnered and invested in,” he said. “It becomes a win-win for everybody involved. In this case it’s a win for the Broadway League, it’s a win for the Theater Wing, it’s a win for CBS, it’s a win for Paramount Plus. And it’s a win for viewers everywhere who can tap into this event, however they choose to.”

The fact that they're putting in this much work, to give us a FOUR HOUR show? Yes it's to bring viewers to Paramount+, but let's face it, more and more people are cord-cutters so they have to find some way to justify the cost of putting it out to begin with. Without Les Moonves to champion the Tonys, we're lucky they're doing it at all.

(There's a free trial. Use that.)

Can anyone confirm if the Paramount+ portion will be viewable in Canada? We can subscribe to Paramount+ here, so I signed up, but we don't always get the same content as the US due to differences in licensing. I don't actually see any sign of the Tony Awards on any menu in the app - but is that the case for everyone?

This is from the Paramount + U.S. app. Once you sign in, this is part of the main menu slideshow:

Yeah, that doesn't show up on the app here in Canada or on the website. I don't want to wait until 7 to find out that I can't stream the first two hours.

It doesn't show up once I search/no search when I'm logged in on the app or desktop

This is gonna be an interesting return to Broadway.

So is this not available in Canada? There is a live news section - is that not it?

FosseTharp said: "According to a Google search you can watch the Tonys on Paramount+ in Canada but you’ll need a VPN to watch it anywhere else besides US and Canada.

Edit: Also, it didn’t show up for me on the main page (from the US) and couldn’t find it until I searched for “Tony” in the search bar. Added it to my list so it’ll be easy to get to at 7:00"

I tried with a VPN and they're smarter than that - you can't log into a Canadian account from a US IP. So then I tried creating a US account using a VPN, but I couldn't do that without a credit card attached to a US address.

Thanks for the suggestion, though.

Loving the fashion I'm seeing so far. Everyone's looking beautiful with some gorgeous color choices. YAY for Broadway!