When award is not a word.

Too many film and television awards. Executives in the entertainment business like to complain about the large number of U.S. and international TV trade shows, but has anyone noticed the proliferation of film and TV awards, especially in the U.S.?

Inflation has certainly hit the audiovisual sector as well. The growing number of stand-alone awards and those associated with trade shows is really becoming unmanageable, like the U.S. economy.

And the U.S. studios seem to be getting fed up with this award inflation, especially the Golden Globes, which are given out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA).

If one counts only the number of major TV and film awards in the three month period from November 2010 to February 2011, the figure reaches an astronomical 27 events. This is without counting local and regional events and film and TV festival awards, which could easily double that figure. In effect, for the four winter months there is one award ceremony every other day. And if other awards bestowed during the remaining months of the year are considered, one can easily see how this wave of statuettes is engulfing the entertainment industry. If, on the other hand, international awards were also to be included, the industry could easily be paralyzed by a gridlock.

Just before this article was completed, the I Los Angeles Times came out with a story decrying the time when "Hollywood had one award ceremony that mattered: The Oscars." The paper then continued with the theme of this article that, "Today, countless guilds, critics groups and film festivals bestow ... all prizes from [September] to late February."

The Times, however, added the twist that, "Some Oscar contenders [reluctantly] put their careers on hold for nearly half a year as they bounce among banquets, red carpets, panel discussions and other fetes."

So crowded is the U.S. award calendar that some industry observers are even suggesting moving the Oscars to late January from the recent late February dates. This would be the fourth date change for the Oscars (originally it was in mid-April, later moved to late March), but would result in the Golden Globes moving back as well.

The studios' venom against the Golden Globes stems from the fact that, among HFPA's 90 members, only a few of them writeforrecognized non-U.S. publications, and when they do, they're minor stringers or free-lance. An Internet search indicated that some HFPA members write for their own websites, others are mainly would-be actors and others free-lance photojournalists. Criticism doesn't come only from the studios, but from the media itself. Here's how the HFPA is described in one report found on the Internet: "The association does not represent internationally renowned publications like Le Monde or The Times of London. Indeed, it has repeatedly rejected applications from Sue Kim, a Le Monde correspondent, while accepting applications from freelance writers from Bangladesh and South Korea."

Ironically, VideoAge contributed to the revival and ultimate success of the Golden Globes with an article in its October 1992 Issue, with the title crying, "Save HFPA." In that article VideoAge wrote: "As the Golden Globe Awards approaches its 50th anniversary, many people in the industry are revaluating the HFPA."

But, the Academy has to contend with other awards as well, which all contribute to removing the element of surprise from the Oscars. Three guilds representing producers, directors and actors--all of whom are voting Academy members--have their award ceremonies a month earlier, and thus they represent a solid indicator of which way the Oscars will be awarded.

In both film and television, awards are associated with excellence and can therefore be seen on par with adjectives such as "great," but grammatically the word "award" is both a noun (e.g., awardee) and a verb (e.g., awarded). It can also be an adjective (e.g., awardable).

Awards are also associated with extravagant costs and therefore increasingly unnecessary expenditures. At times, "award" is a word that some producers would like to remove from their vocabulary. The tact that the awards are losing their shine was first indicated in a New York Times story that pointed out how trade publications that depend mostly on award shows advertising are suffering a loss of revenue.

Below is a list of key U.S. entertainment awards from the four month period, November 2010-March 2011:

Governors Awards (Nov. 13) by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

American Music Awards (Nov. 21) by Dick Clark Productions

International Emmys (Nov. 22) by the International Academy of Television

Gotham Independent Film Award (Nov. 29) by Independent Feature Project

National Board of Review Awards (Dec. 2)

International Documentary Association Awards (Dec. 3)

African American Film Critics Awards (Dec. 13)

Satellite Awards (Dec. 19) by International Press Academy

People's Choice Awards (Jan. 5) by Procter & Gamble and Mark Burnett

American Film Institute Awards (Jan. 14)

Critics' Choice Awards (Jan. 14) by Broadcast Film Critics Association

Golden Globe Awards (Jan. 16) by the Holly wood Foreign Press Association

Producers Guild Awards (Jan. 22)

Directors Guild of America Awards (Jan. 29)

SAG Awards (Jan. 30)

Visual Effects Society Awards (Feb. 1)

Annie Awards (Feb. 5) by the International Animated Film Society

Art Directors Guild Awards (Feb. 5)

WGA Awards (Feb. 5)

American Society of Cinematographers' TV Awards (Feb. 13)

Grammy Awards (Feb. 13) by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences

Cinema Audio Society Awards (Feb. 19)

Golden Reel (Feb. 20) by Motion Picture Sound Editors Awards

Costume Designers Guild Awards (Feb. 22)

Film Independent Spirit Awards (Feb. 26) by Film Independent Organization

Oscars (Feb. 27) by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Image Awards (March 4) by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.