Grammy awards for 2022 postponed due to Omicron
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3 min read . Updated: 06 Jan 2022, 05:05 PM IST Organizers say annual televised show slated for later this month ‘simply contains too many risks’
Organizers of the Grammy Awards called off “music’s biggest night" scheduled for later this month due to uncertainty around the Omicron variant of Covid-19.
“The health and safety of those in our music community, the live audience and the hundreds of people who work tirelessly to produce our show remains our top priority," said the Recording Academy and ViacomCBS Inc.’s broadcast network CBS, which run and broadcast the awards, respectively. They added that holding the show on Jan. 31 “simply contains too many risks."
They said a new future date would be announced soon.
Other institutions that put on awards ceremonies, concerts, film festivals and high-profile schmoozing events are also changing plans and going virtual as the Covid-19 variant sweeps through the US.
One of the biggest such gatherings, the Sundance Film Festival, slated to convene in Park City, Utah, starting on Jan. 20, on Wednesday said it would move to a fully virtual event from the hybrid model initially planned for the annual celebration of independent film.
Last month, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which holds the Oscars, announced that its annual Governors Awards gala, which fetes industry luminaries with honorary awards, would be postponed from Jan. 15 to an unspecified date.
The Grammys were also postponed last year due to Covid-19, from the end of January to mid-March. The show was also moved from its traditional venue at the Staples Center—since renamed Crypto.com Arena—to the Los Angeles Convention Center to allow for the slimmed-down guest list to space out.
The Recording Academy is a nonprofit and relies on people paying top dollar for tickets to the show as a significant source of income. This year’s show was expected to return to full capacity at Crypto.com Arena.
Other big-ticket events attached to the Grammys, including the MusiCares gala and the Clive Davis/Recording Academy’s Pre-Grammy Gala, are likely to move to the week before the rescheduled show.
Beginning the year with such a major postponement is the latest setback for a live entertainment industry still reeling from the devastation of worker shortages, outbreaks canceling shows already complicated by vaccine and testing mandates, and empty seats from no-shows.
While concert executives for much of the past year pointed to the success of outdoor festivals and fans’ eagerness to snap up tickets for future events, the quick spread of Omicron casts a potential shadow over their long-held sentiment that 2022 will be the biggest year ever for live events and a return to normalcy for the entertainment industry at large.
Several shows around the holidays were put off as cases increased, including the Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes and LCD Soundsystem’s Brooklyn residency.
January otherwise tends to be a quieter month for regular concert touring. Earlier this week, Van Halen lead singer David Lee Roth canceled the rest of his January dates at the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas due to Covid-19 concerns, after also canceling his New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day performances.
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Also this week, Sony Pictures Entertainment postponed the release of its upcoming superhero adaptation “Morbius" from Jan. 28 to April 1. The shuffle deprives theater owners of one of the few big-budget releases at the start of the year, and comes after the studio has had blockbuster success with another superhero offering, “Spider-Man: No Way Home."
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