In an e-mail, Jon Delfin pointed out something I hadn't noticed about last night's Tony Awards telecast: No Obit Montage. Plenty o' theatrical figures have passed away since the last Tonys, including Kitty Carlisle Hart, Alvin Colt, Paul Scofield, Beverly Sills, Deborah Kerr, Robert Goulet, Michael Kidd, Gretchen Wyler, Alice Ghostley, Myoshi Umeki, Tom Poston and the guy in the banana suit, Charles Nelson Reilly. Still, someone made the decision not to bring the proceedings to the usual grim halt by playing sad music and rattling off the list of the departed.
Ratings-wise, it didn't help a lot. The telecast averaged a 4.9 rating and an 8 share, which was down a bit from last year. Still, that's not terrible. CBS has renewed series that get numbers like that…and which sponsors are less eager to buy time in. The audience for the Tonys may be small but it has a nice "buying" profile and demographic so it's probably not in any danger of not being on CBS for years to come.
The folks behind the Tonys are probably satisfied that the audience is sufficiently large…and comprised of folks who are likely to buy tickets to Broadway productions. That is, after all, the main goal of the broadcast — to serve as an infomercial for shows in New York. It will be interesting to see what shows announce their closings in the next few days. There are usually a few marginal ones who hang around long enough to see what, if anything, the Tony show will do for their ticket sales.