There was a time when Award function means Filmfare awards. It was a time when there were no satelite channels. People used to look forward to filmfare awards. People used to have curiosity about the nominations, winners. But things have changed drastically in last few years. Why ? People still do watch films, everyone still have opinion about films, stars, performances but they are not much interested about the nominations or winners. Is it because we have so many awards these days ?? Filmfare is the oldest one and it has also lost its charm unlike Oscars.
People do watch award shows mostly to see gags and performance of their favorite stars. Bollywood Award shows have become a commercial event on the name of appreciating best talents of one of the world's largest film industries.
How these award shows actually work for last few years ?? My Observation is as follow:
Commercial Aspect :
Group of Organizers decide to organize award show. Award show is a very costly affair. Cost includes arranging the main event, preparation stuff, paying hefty fees to performers, hosts, crew etc.
Organizers are not doing any charity here, they are here to make profits. Either they sell the broadcasting rights to a channel or they jointly organize these shows on profit sharing base.
How channel will recover the investment? They have to find sponsership when they air this event. Public is not going to watch dull event where only awards would be given and received without any raaz-mataaz. So, they have to go to popular stars, superstars to convince them for their presence, performance etc.
Stars are also not doing any charity, they will ask for hefty fees for performance or an award in popular categories or made-to-order category like "Most popular star of the year", "Sensation of the year" etc.
There are some stars who are not comfortable with such gimmics, so either they skip the event or watching others giving acceptance speech.
Critical Aspect:
Academy Award committee has 5800+ members for voting. Based on their voting, films will be filtered further for final nominations. There are multiple round of nominations. Nobody can be a member of this committee, There is a strict prerequisite to get selected as a member. Due to such large number of voters, it's very tough for producers to influence them.
Most of the Bollywood awards have 12-15 jury members. There is no defined criteria to select these jury members.
Result: Your guess is as good as mine !!
Special Note:
Recently, Salman Khan performed in an award show. However, he didn't went on the stage to collect his critics' choice award for Dabangg!! He said that he would perform on shows only for money which will be used in Being Human foundation. Shahrukh was given best actor popular award for MNIK.
Just think, why we have so many categories and some WEIRD categories in every award shows ??
On a positive note, I think technical awards are still given to deserving candidates.
