Neil Portnow The Grammy’s

We’ve coined Grammy night as “music’s biggest night.” I think it’s true in a number of ways. First of all, in terms of television, there really isn’t another program on television that is remotely close to the level of what we do, either in scope, in size, in level of excellence, production values, importance to the artists that are there and significance on a worldwide basis on having an impact on an artist’s career. There’s nothing that matches the Grammy’s. So, you know, we employ more musicians, there’re more lights and more bells and whistles for our show than for any other. I think what’s most gratifying to me personally is that in the artists’ community there’s nothing like being a Grammy recipient. If you’ll notice, if you see a press release, if you see an obituary, if you see a notice about a review, if you see any reference to an artist who’s either been nominated or has received a Grammy it’s always prefaced by “Grammy Award winner” or “Grammy nominated artist Joe Blow or Jill Jones.” You’ll never see that sort of title from any of the other so-called awards shows. That’s because it’s the only award that means something to the artists because it’s a peer award. This is not something that fans can dial in on their cell phones; it’s not something that music journalists can weigh in on; it’s not something that’s based on sales. It’s really based upon our voting membership, which is over 12,000 qualified, musical folks, who are experts at what they do, saying to the artist “you represent the best in music and the highest level of excellence in recorded music over this past year.” And that’s why it’s so important to those folks.

Well, the Grammy is a sort of a term that was used to describe what was originally one of the early recording technologies, which was a gramophone. So the gramophone is a machine. I have one up in the office where you crank it up, and its spring based and as you crank it the turntable goes around and you place the needle and the sound comes out of a big horn. That’s a gramophone. There was actually a contest to name what the award would be and “Grammy” was the winning name that was used and we’ve been known as that ever since. That’s the derivation of the term.

The organization started, and it’s very interesting because we’re gearing up for a big milestone for our organization, which is that 2007 will mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Academy and February of 2008 will mark the 50th Grammy show. So, we’re hard at work pulling all the elements together for that. The original concept of this was hatched by five fellows in the music industry having a dinner meeting at the Brown Derby down in Hollywood and talking about trying to have an organization that recognized excellence in recorded music, similar to what had happened in the field of motion pictures. Out of that meeting came the beginning of the Recording Academy in 1957. Since then, obviously, we’ve grown enormously, but from those dreams and from those roots came a pretty big idea that resonated and ultimately went from a small ceremony in a hotel ballroom, which is what it started as, growing to a larger venue, eventually at the Palladium Theatre in town and then ultimately to the Shrine Auditorium and now we’re an area-size program where we’re at Staples Center and Madison Square Garden. It’s come a long way in that period of time. It was not a television broadcast in its original version it was just sort of a dinner and an awards ceremony and shortly thereafter there was a thought about trying to televise the show. They sold it to one of the networks and it started as a small show and it’s grown since then as well.

As you point out there’s so many elements to Grammy night, and actually we’ve expanded it to be Grammy week at this point. It’s a whole week of activities that we oversee but in terms of the day and the night, obviously the telecast itself is of primary importance to us because that’s how we’re seen by the world. I would have to say, although I’m not an expert at television production per say in my career, but based on what everyone has told me and based on what I’ve seen firsthand, it’s the most complicated music show in television, ever. That’s because we’re over twenty acts within that three and half hours at this point. The elaborate productions that are involved, plus the set changes… we’re on three stages now, we’re the only show that has done that, in order to do the set changes that we need to do, plus the fact that so many of these things are integrated with lighting and video and live performance, plus the fact that we’re known for “Grammy moments” which is, in particular, unique pairings of artists that may or may not have ever worked together. So the dynamics of orchestrating all of that are enormous. Add to that something that most people don’t think about, which is if you’re producing a music television special, you can start any time of the year that you want to write it, to design it, to cast it, to storyboard it, to record it unless it’s live, and pretty much have a wide realm of possibilities as to how that show would be developed. In our case, because we are a process, first of all, our show is pretty much restricted to the nominees in any given year. So while we might think that there’s an artist who’d be wonderful on television, there might not be an appropriate reason to put them there because they’re not in our process that given year. That’s number one, number two is: it’s a very short window from the point that we get the nominations. This year, for example, it was December the 8th where we had the press conference and we announced the final five nominees in each of the 108 categories. Between December 8th and February 11 when the show aired, that’s our window to put this show together. Now, factor in Christmas and the holidays in the middle of that, the level of talent that we’re dealing with, the schedules, the bookings, shall we say the egos have something to do, potentially, it’s a massive undertaking. It’s a scramble from start to finish and yet it comes out to be, you know, the most wonderful three and a half hours of music that you could see anywhere, no less on television. The other thing that occurs to me having been around and watching others and also being out and seeing live shows, it’s the best live concert in America because you get all of this great music under one roof and it’s live and it’s unpredictable and like with anything that’s live, you’re going to get what you get at the moment. It’s spontaneous and it’s irreplaceable and one of a kind.

It’s a two-step process. First of all, recordings that are released in America within the window of eligibility, which is every year, it’s an annual basis; those recordings are all eligible to be entered into the process. They can be entered by record labels, they can be entered by our members, they can be entered by recording artists, you don’t have to be a member to enter recordings into the nominations process. We get approximately 15,000 entries. What we do from there is we have a wonderful awards department staff, we have committees that are made up of the elected leadership of the academy and that is sort of based on a chapter-by-chapter basis. Each chapter has a board of governors that it elects from its membership; each board of governors has committees that it recommends. So, we have each of the twelve chapters’ representatives who are experts in various fields who get together to weigh in on all of our process. We’ll take those 15,000 entries and make sure that they are eligible for one, and then we’ll go through the categorization of where they belong, which is a whole interesting process as well. We have separate committees that are the screening committees that will go through and literally listen to the nominated music and be sure that it’s in as good a category as we can get it. And again, that’s an imperfect science, at best. We’re dealing with something that’s somewhat subjective and it’s hard to be objective all the time. Certain things could be in one category or another but we have these committees and these experts that vet that. So ultimately what you have is the 15,000 entered pieces of music that are then sent to the voting membership for whittling down to the final five nominations in each of the 108 categories. It’s an amazing process as you can imagine and growing because every year there’s more music that’s potentially eligible and we want to be inclusive. That’s pretty much the first round of voting. As I said we come down to five final nominees in each of the categories, which are then voted on and we don’t know the winners until the day of the show.

The actual process all the way through is vetted by our accounting firm who we’ve had for many years, Deloitte and Touche. It’s pretty much the way the major award shows are handled, the Academy Awards are handled the same way. So all of the ballots and all of that pass directly to them, we don’t see that. All we do is verify the membership information and current mailing addresses and so on and so forth. We’re always going through that process to make sure that there are not loopholes and that there aren’t ways to circumvent or get around the legitimacy and it’s down pretty tight I must say. We look at it every year and review that. Deloitte is really the folks who do all of the accounting on the votes and the ballots and they’re the only ones that have those results until the very end of the process. I get an envelope so I’ll know day of or sometimes night before, there’re certain technical elements that we need to know in order to produce the show. As you know, of the 108 categories, it’s probably a dozen or so that get presented on air during the telecast, the others get presented at what we call a pre-telecast which we’ve changed dramatically in the past three years as well. This is so all the folks that are nominated and are recipients get to have a dignified way to be honored and receive their awards. In my mind every Grammy is equal of importance. It’s very tight and there’s no way that anyone else can actually know.