The following is a recording of a press event held by Zgamer, the head of the Golden Globe panel, following the recent publishing of I!'s article:"Hello and thank you all for coming. At this time, I would like to address the recent article on I! criticizing the GG panel's decision to suspend this month's progression. Before I elaborate, I would like to say I am not mad that the article was posted. We are all respectable authors on this site and we each have our own opinions. The right to express those opinions are part of the basic principles of our country. However, I feel it would be better for one of the panel members to come out and publicly address the issue before it gets blown out of proportion.
"First, this decision was just as hard on the panel as it was to the voters. It took much thought and consideration, but in the end the panel found it may prove beneficial in the long run. I know this is upsetting, as we have not missed a month of broadcast since the precursor was handed over to me by Harry almost two years ago. Still, everything happens for a reason.
"The primary reason for our decision was a combination of details. First, we felt that at the time when the deadline had been reached, we simply didn't have enough baits to accurately justify a group of nominees fitting the public's opinion. Because seriously, do we want four people, with one of them a panel member,to decide what baits garner buzz? While others have attempted to send ballots encouraging to revoke our decision, we just feel it would ruin the integrity of the panel members and this long standing precursor to change it now. Second, the fact that people have only really tried to vote after we made the decision was one of annoyance. We feel that we gave a reasonable amount of time to allow people to send ballots and they never came. It just felt wrong.
"Now, I would like to address the recent complaints surfacing as to why people have either not voted or think the contest does not allow proper voting procedure. The biggest being that the precursor has continued to uphold the policy that voters cannot vote for their own baits. While we are not blind to the fact many precursors have changed their standing here, it just isn't in the interest of this panel as of now to change that policy. For almost two years, there had been no problem withhaving people not vote for their own baits, as we usually received a good number of ballots throughout. Besides, what point is there to healthy competition if we let people vote for themselves? Is it fair to tip the scales towards your bait when maybe there may be another one more deserving? Even I know that I don't always write the hit of the month, but I always make sure to support other people who do write the classics and hits of that month. Sure, it may hurt a bait's chances of garnering praise, but not if enough people vote with support for it. So perhaps the problem is not being able to vote for yourself, but getting enough people to vote for your bait. Our decision will not be swayed though and our policy of not voting for your own bait will still stand.
"The other complaint mentioned addresses frustration towards finding baits to fill categories when there are a shortage, especially in Comedy/Musical categories. I personally think this is a more justifiable excuse and both of the panel members are currently in talks of addressing it. Our current plan being discussed is to put a link to the 'Bait Genre' thread that's started every month so people can find the nominees needed to fill their ballots. This is easy to do and we hope this will be resolved for next month's ceremony.
"As for the complaint about time constraint and extending our timetables, this will be harder to fix but not impossible. See, each timetable is constructed with the hopes the the ceremonies will be finished prior to the announcement of the Oscar nominations with the hopes it will generate buzz for nominees. However, this also conflicts with a common argument that the precursors hold no real power over the outcome of the Oscar nominations. Seriously, so what? The purpose of this contest is to emulate the real Oscar race and in almost every Oscar race, precursors usually generate buzz no matter how big or small and even they aren't always correct when concerning predictions. Now this isn't truly the real reason why there may be problems with the timetables. Since Johnny Alba does not always announce when the nominees will be unveiled before the precursors start, it's hard to tell how long we have to get everything put together.So we try to estimate a reasonable amount of time at which the GG can be completed done before the Oscar nominations. The panel understands this concern though and we will address this in our e-mails so we can make the time for voting suitable for everyone. It won't do much good if people don't vote though.
"Again, I take no true pleasure with these recent events, but perhaps it is for the best it happens now rather than later. We will do our best to fix the concerns with time to vote and accessibility of genres, but in the end we really need to people to participate. This has been a major issue for some time and we share your concern. So perhaps we will truly act on Douglass's video message and become more active in the forum and more supportive of each other. I promise to do this and everyone else should to. Only by doing that can the contest continue to flourish."
End of Recording
