E! Entertainment's awkward, tone-deaf 75th Golden Globe Awards red carpet coverage, asking only women about sexual harassment and the #MeToo cause - but not men.

E! Entertainment's (DStv 124) pre-show red carpet coverage of the 75th Golden Globe awards on Sunday night in Los Angeles was unbalanced (meaning unequal - not crazy), awkward, cringe-worthy and coming across as out of touch and tone-deaf - raising questions about the extent to which E! and the NBCUniversal people running E! News are really still in touch with how Hollywood has changed and is changing.

The coverage of the 75th Golden Globes on E! late on Sunday night and in the early hours of Monday morning - South African and African time - was quite insightful for the way in which E! showed on E! how distant and somehow detached the NBCUniversal pay-TV channel that covers the world of entertainment, has seemingly become.

For a channel that for years has made as if it has the "inside track" on Hollywood's entertainment biz, E!'s Sunday night Golden Globe coverage showed E! to not just be somehow "out of the loop", but even worse: part of the problem.

Whose to blame for this? Ryan Seacrest Productions? Co-hosts Giuliana Rancic and Ryan Seacrest who haven't been a day-to-day part of E! and E! News for years but who now only parachute in for red carpet coverage?

Or the litany of unqualified "showbizzy" quacks E! lets loose to screech and squeal for 4 hours without substance?

NBCUniversal and E!'s Golden Globes red carpet coverage team for its Countdown to the Red Carpet: The 2018 Golden Globe Awards seemed wholly - wholly - unprepared, unqualified and lazy for this year's awards ceremony, unable to substantively cover it in a new way, given how the atmosphere and themes in Hollywood - and impacting on the Golden Globes - had changed.

As women (and men) wore black as part of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements and campaigns, E! didn't seem to have any real interest, or any real plan on covering it comprehensively or properly - as if E! executives have put zero thought into it. It showed.

E!'s Giuliana Rancic said E! would ask this year "why you wearing black tonight? instead of "who you wearing" - odd, because it's not supposed to be a binary issue.

E! should be able to ask lots of different questions of Hollywood celebrities. It's not necessary for anything to be either a "just this" or a "just that" case.

If anything, E! should simply (have been) able to broaden its own scope by including an exploration of the issue of sexual harassment in Hollywood for a deeper perspective, instead of going for an overly-fixated focus on one issue (which it didn't even do), and discarding another.

E! should be able to - and can - ask people about their clothes and their causes.

Even with that said, E!'s Live From the Red Carpet: 2018 Golden Globes came across as reluctant to even really explore and ask celebrities about #MeToo and #TimesUp and was very one dimensional in its approach.

While Giuliana Rancic - very robot-like as if it's the one default, go-to question she remembers - asked some women, Ryan Seacrest couldn't even be bothered to try and ask any men.

E! peppered actress after actress with questions about workplace discrimination, sexual misconduct and gender disparity - but with a kind of heavy-handed approach, lacking any organic subtlety.

Yet E! and especially Ryan Seacrest - himself accused of misconduct and under investigation - couldn't get himself to ask a single man questions around the same topics.

E! seemed weirdly lost on Sunday night, or at the very least "behind" the times.

Then of course there were Debra Messing, Eva Longoria, Laura Dern, Sarah Jessica Parker and others also took to E! to slam E! during its live coverage, about its refusal to pay women as much as men for doing the same job and over how badly E! treated Catt Sadler who decided to quit because of NBCUniversal's gender pay gap at E!.

Interestingly celebrities spoke more on E! about the pay disparity between men and women - an issue where E! is part of the problem - than what E! has been willing to talk about since December 2017.

Some unknown person named Justin Sylvester was one of the B-grade presenters roped in by E! to do its backdoor coverage. Of course if you hire amateur, you get amateur, and the B-graders didn't disappoint, making E!'s Golden Globe red carpet coverage look oddly off-kilter.

E!'s Kristin Dos Santos who was also in the "skybox" again this year remains imminently qualified, knowledgeable and experienced to do red carpet coverage at a TV and film awards ceremony.

The problem is the other who-are-they's that E! has fanning out for red carpet titbits and who are neither skilled, not informed.

"Our coverage is woke!" exclaimed the one called Justin Sylvester, clueless about the irony of just how out-of-touch he made E! look as the gaggle of up-and-comers huddled at the drop-off area where the stars' limousines stop before they start their red carpet walk.

Will NBCUniversal and E! executives, as well as E! News staffers go and sit and do a post mortem to try and improve and better align future red carpet coverage with how the showbiz world as an industry but also the world at large is and has been changing? They really should.

E! seems to wants to do red carpet coverage like how Joan Rivers did it in her heydays. There's nothing per se wrong with that, but E! either missed the memo or refuses to read like Donald Trump, while the world has changed.

Should NBCUniversal and E! look at upskilling and possibly trying to find better people with the right knowledge and tact to do better red carpet coverage at awards shows where presenters have to know enough, and know what to do, as well as be able to tread water waiting for celebrities to arrive?

Definitely, if it wants to remain relevant.

E!'s robocall-like, one dimensional Golden Globe coverage was phlegmy and its lack of questions about #MeToo to men, very self-evident of how ingrained its own gender disparity issues actually are at E!.

The world has changed and it's time for E! to wake up and to adapt; to change and organically broaden its red carpet coverage.

E! seems yet to realise that its award show coverage will become irrelevant if it continues to hark on with the same-old, same-old, instead of purposefully strategising on how to realign itself with how the red carpet - and those who walk on it - has evolved.

E! can - and must - look at itself, and evolve to do better.

Watch Oprah Winfrey's powerful 75th Golden Globes speech receiving the Cecil B. DeMille award that gets Hollywood on their feet: 'At this moment there are some little girls watching as I become the first black women to be given the same award'.

Entertainment and talk show legend and philantropist Oprah Winfrey got rousing applause and brought Hollywood to their feet on Sunday night at the 75th Golden Globe Awards in Los Angeles with her moving speech accepting the Cecil B. DeMille award, saying she knows that somewhere little girls are watching as she becomes the first black woman to get this award.

Oprah Winfrey also said "we all know the press is under siege these days".

"But we also know that it is the insatiable dedication to uncovering the absolute truth that keeps us from turning a blind eye to corruption and to injustice, to tyrants and victims and secrets and lies".

"I want to say that I value the press more than ever before," said Oprah Winfrey.

"What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have. And I'm especially proud and inspired by all the women have have felt strong enough, and empowered enough, to speak up and share their personal stories."

"Each of us in this room are celebrated because of the stories that we tell. And this year we became the story.But it's not just a story affecting the entertainment industry, it's one that transcends any culture, geography, race, religion, politics or work place".

"I want to express gratitude to all the women who have endured years of abuse and assault because they, like my mother, had children to feed and bills to pay and dreams to pursue".

"They're the women whose names we'll never know. They are domestic workers. And farm workers. They are working on factories and they work in restaurants and academia, and engineering, and medicine and science and they're part of the world of tech, and politics and business, athletes in the Olympics and soldiers in the military".

"And there's someone else: Recy Taylor. A name I know and I think you should know too."

"In 1944 Recy Taylor was just walking home from a church service she attended in Alabama when she was abducted by six armed white men, raped and blindfolded by the side of the road; coming home from church".

"They threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone. But her story was reported to the NAACP where a young worker by the name of Rosa Parks became the lead investigator on her case and together they sought justice".

"But justice wasn't an option in the era of Jim Crow. The men who tried to destroy her were never prosecuted. Recy Taylor died 10 days ago, just shy of her 98th birthday."

"She lived, as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men. For too long women have not been heard or believed if they dared to speak their truth to the power of those men. But their time is up," said Oprah Winfrey.

"And I just hope that that Recy Taylor died knowing that her truth - like the truth of so many other women who were tormented in those years - goes marching on."

"It was somewhere in Rosa Parks' heart almost 11 later when she made the decision to stay seated on that bus, and it's hear with every women who chooses to say #MeToo, and every man who chooses to listen."

"In my career what I've always tried my best to do - whether on television or through film - is to say something of how men and women really behave, to say how we experience shame, how we love and rage and how we fail and how we retreat, persevere and how we overcome."

And I've interviewed and portrayed people who had withstood some of the ugliest things life can throw at you. But the one quality all of them seem to share is an ability to maintain hope for a brighter morning - even during our darkest night."

"So I want all girls here now, to know that a new day is on the horizon, and when that new day finally dawns, it will be because of a lot of magnificent women, many of whom are right here in this room tonight, and some pretty phenomenal men, fighting hard to make sure that they become the leaders who take us to the time when nobody else has to say #MeToo again," said Oprah Winfrey.

Sunday's 2018 75th Golden Globe Awards will have its official red carpet show on Facebook, pre-show coverage on E!, and awards ceremony on M-Net channels on DStv.

South African and African viewers will be able to watch programming from Sunday's upcoming 2018 75th Golden Globe Awards live on Facebook, M-Net's channels and E! Entertainment on MultiChoice's DStv.


Official red carpet pre-show on Facebook
Time: Monday 8 January, 01:00 - 03:00
The 75th Golden Globes official red carpet pre-show will be streamed as a live broadcast exclusively on Facebook this year after Twitter streamed the official red carpet show exclusively in 2017.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) and dick clark productions announced that they've reached a deal with Facebook to live stream the ceremony's official red carpet pre-show for the 75th Annual Golden Globe Awards.

The official two-hour pre-show entitled The HFPA Presents: Globes Red Carpet Live will run from Monday morning 8 January at 01:00 to 03:00 South African time at www.facebook.com/GoldenGlobes with red carpet presenters AJ Gibson, Jeannie Mai, Scott Mantz and Laura Marano.

As part of the partnership, 360-degree videos will be captured from the red carpet and throughout the pre-show and distributed on the Golden Globes’ Facebook page.

"We’re thrilled to partner with Facebook and give viewers a front-row seat to the red carpet that can’t be found anywhere else,” says HFPA president Meher Tatna in a statement.

“We hope to enhance the overall viewing experience so fans at home can feel they’re enjoying the show alongside their favorite stars at Hollywood’s biggest party of the year.”

Sibyl Goldman, Facebook’s head of entertainment partnerships, says “We always aim to create unique experiences which bring communities together, and partaking in the kick-off of award season in conjunction with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association is a demonstration of our commitment to bring fans together through entertainment they enjoy.”


Red carpet coverage on E! on DStv
Time: Sunday 7 January, 23:00 - 03:00
E! Entertainment (DStv 124) will once again do live red carpet pre-show coverage of the Golden Globes as well from Monday morning.

E! will start its Golden Globes coverage at 23:00 on Sunday 7 January with the live, two-hour Countdown to the Red Carpet: The 2018 Golden Globe Awards featuring behind-the-scenes preparations, insider interviews, nominee predictions and fashion forecasting.

Note that this live special doesn't show up in MultiChoice's electronic programme guide (EPG) on DStv (yet), so no reminder or recording can be set, but will definitely take place and be broadcast on E! in South Africa and Africa, as announced by E!.

This two-hour show will be followed at 01:00 for a two-hour block until 03:00 of Live from the Red Carpet: The 2018 Golden Globes.

Ryan Seacrest and Giuliana Rancic will co-host E!'s Live from the Red Carpet: 2018 Golden Globes. Ryan Seacrest also continues as executive producer of the Live from the Red Carpet show.

This broadcast will be repeated on Monday at 18:10, and a special E! News Golden Globes wrap-up edition on Tuesday at 19:05.


Official ceremony on M-Net channels on DStv
Time: Monday 8 January, 03:00
Sunday’s 75th Golden Globe Awards will be broadcast live on Monday morning 8 January on MultiChoice’s DStv satellite pay-TV platform on M-Net Movies Premiere (DStv 104) at 03:00 in the morning South African time.

The awards show will then again be shown during South African primetime on the same day on M-Net (DStv 101) at 21:10.