Critics Choice Confusion: Earlier still even after that "We voted too early!" scandal last season
Wednesday, August 24, 2016 at 12:00PM 
My apologies that I've neglected to mention one significant but oddly motivated date change for this forthcoming awards season. But it is definitely worth discussing.
You may recall that The Broadcast Film Critics Association (of which I am a member) more commonly known as "Critics Choice" lost several members last season due a very unethical move. The executives opted to ignore the balloting and just polled critics informally about whether they would have included Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015) had they seen it in time. I've yet to understand what their thinking was since, without changing all the voting, that one unethical change was clearly doing to do nothing for the ceremony or their reputation beyond harming it. The Star Wars cast was never going to show up since they were all busy and they weren't nominated in the Action performance categories designed to honor such things.
Now after that "we voted too early!" disaster, this season they've moved the voting and the ceremony earlier still....
Are memories so short that they aren't worried similar buyers remorse and bad press if they reneg? There are bound to be movies each and every year that don't screen before December. This year the nominations will be announced on December 1st with the actual ceremony held very shortly thereafter on December 11th... which is incidentally the day the nomination ballots were due last year and before The Force Awakens had screened for critics. So after publicly miserating about voting too early the voting has moved earlier by two weeks!
Key Film Award Dates This Season
2015
Nov 12th, 2016. Governor Awards (aka Honorary Oscars)
Nov 28th, 2016. Annie Nominations
Dec 1st, 2016. Critics Choice Nominations
Dec 11th, 2016. 22nd annual Critics Choice Awards
Dec 12th, 2016. Golden Globe Nominations
Dec 14th, 2016. SAG Nominations
2016
Jan 4th. National Board of Review Gala (plus: WGA Nominations)
Jan 5th. Oscar Nomination Balloting Begins
Jan 8th. 74th annual Golden Globe Awards
Jan 10th. PGA Nominations
Jan 12th. CDG & DGA Nominations
Jan 13th. Oscar Nomination Balloting Closes
Jan 24th. Oscar Nominations
Jan 28th. 28th Annual Producers Guild Awards
Jan 29th. 23rd annual Screen Actors Guild Awards
Feb 4th. 69th annual DGA Awards and 44th annual Annie Awards
Feb 12th. Sci-Tech Oscars (Plus: 59th annual Grammy Awards)
Feb 13th. Final Oscar Balloting Begins
Feb 19th. 69th annual WGA Awards
Feb 21st. Costume Designers Guild Awards
Feb 21st. Final Oscar Balloting Closes
Feb 25th. Spirit Awards
Feb 26th. 89th annual Academy Awards
Reader Comments (12)
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.
By giving out their awards one day before the Globe/SAG nominations, they basically take themselves out of the conversation altogether. They're no longer IN the mix. They're over before the mix even starts.
This does seem odd, for the reasons you give. And isn't the ceremony itself usually around the time the Oscar nominations are announced? Which would mean they've moved it forward by about a month! Either it's a strange decision or there's a very good reason but it's not obvious
Mike in Canada -
YES! lol, my thoughts EXACTLY
So they're aping the Satellite Awards then. Sure.
Mike: I'd argue the year SHOULD be balanced in such a way that both Oscar and Razzie are about three quarters complete at the end of September. Instead, Razzie is 95% complete and Oscar is only about 1/3 done.
The only way this makes sense to me is if it was intended as some sort of power play by the organization to stop the December glut: Open/screen your film early, or it won't be getting the Critics' Choice! And while that MIGHT persuade some smaller films banking on such a thing to do business, I can't imagine this change will prompt anything other than a shrug from most distribution companies.
Maybe now that all those Oscar-bait December films can't contend they'll be better at doing advocacy noms? That's the only real plus I can think of from this. Sure it feels like they have less status but maybe it'll lead to more interesting choices now that fewer films born for awards season can contend, especially when it feels like it's hard to find critics that agree with the critic's choice nominees. Who can say.
Hilarious. Maybe this year they'll survey all the members when STAR WARS: ROGUE ONE opens and nominate it *after* the ceremony as a kind of postscript to the awards show.
It's just nuts. Whoever came up with this idea is so stupid. Yet, they are clearly doing this under the belief that it will bolster their reputation since anything after December 1st can claim in their ads and trailers that they have already won or been nominated for big awards. Except nobody really cares about the BFCA Awards. Not yet, anyway. And with moves like this that relevancy the higher ups so desperately crave won't be coming along any time soon.
This is odd...was there some sort of board consensus? Are they trying to set the tone for the rest of the season? Or is it as simple as wanting to get it all done and dusted so that folks have more time to get their Christmas shopping done?
Let's pay them the ultimate insult and completely ignore them.
Although you're a member, just dump the nominations and winners in a Links post. Don't care until they give me a reason to.