Why must the Theater Fans Choice Awards be so full of omissions?

Endless pet peeves but I'll just name three:

Cynthia Erivo is missing from every Best Performer of the decade list (which she certainly was).

Bridges of Madison County is missing from the Best Musical of the decade list (which is certainly was).

An American in Paris is missing from the best Set Design of the decade list (which it certainly was).

Anyone else have complaints (or praise)?

Updated On: 8/4/20 at 03:05 PM

Like all awards, these are skewed by the demographics of the voter base. Shows with younger fan bases are more likely to be vote in these kinds of awards. And in a similar vein, the more passionate the fan base, the more likely they are to go out of their way to vote, and rally the other fans to vote too. And more recent shows are more likely to have young, active fan-bases.

Not to mention, shows that are more famous/more widely talked about are more likely to receive votes, simply because more people will have seen them. Unlike real awards bodies, you don't have to have seen all of the nominees in order to vote in a category.

This is always how the fan-choice awards are.

So just to clarify, zero plays had any costumes designed for them and "Head Over Heels" and "The Cher Show" are possible shows to vote on for Best Musical but "Book of Mormon" is not. Got it, makes perfect sense, BroadwayWorld.

JBroadway said: "
Again, BroadwayWorld didn’t pick the nominees, fans did. There was a voting period where people could enter in their preferred nominees in each category, and the BWW team presumably picked the ones that received the most votes.

I find many of the inclusions and omissions egregious, but at the end of the day, you just have to accept that this is the literal definition of a popularity contest, with a certain kind of popularity favored over others (see my post above). Nowadays, the fan base for a show like Book of Mormon wouldn’t be as likely to vote on something like this as as the fan base for a recent musical was young, active cult following.

Especially because the nomination voting process was pretty time-consuming (you had to hand-type your picks into individual text boxes, for each of the many categories). And there are some demographics who have more time on their hands than others right now."

Sorry, I was referring to the BroadwayWorld community in general (meaning everyone who visited this site and voted) when I said "makes perfect sense", not the moderators or the site in general. But I will send a sarcastic "great job" in their direction as well for making it so difficult to vote.