The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the group of journalists for non-American outlets that organizes the Golden Globes, has long been controversial, but the industry worked with it because its telecast proved a marketing boon for films and TV shows.

After a year off the air while grappling with the fallout from a Los Angeles Times report that detailed the absence of Black members at the HFPA and questionable practices by the organization, NBC hosted the Globes on Jan. 10, but only after renegotiating its deal with the HFPA and its production company, Dick Clark Productions, so that it would end after that telecast, rather than stretch through 2026.

The Globes’ hunt for a new home comes at a potentially opportune time. With streaming now embracing advertising, services are on the hunt for content built for live engagement. Netflix and Disney+, which did not launch with advertising, now have ad tiers, joining the likes of Paramount+, Hulu, HBO Max and Peacock. In an ad-free subscription model, the single most important metric for executives is subscriber growth and retention, with all revenue effectively coming from subscribers. In an ad-supported model, subscriber revenue is great, but in order to deliver strong ad revenue, you also need to dominate “time spent.”

In other words, people need to watch your content, preferably for an extended period of time. Live events remain unmatched in getting a mass of viewers to watch the same program at the same time for an extended period, and it’s a big reason why Disney moved reality show Dancing With the Stars from ABC to Disney+ and why Netflix is entering the live-event space with a Chris Rock stand-up special.

Netflix also announced a plan Jan. 11 to stream the 2024 SAG Awards, which have been without a home since they were jettisoned by Warner Bros. Discovery last year. Putting aside the politics of getting into the awards business, Netflix is betting it can leverage its scale to turn the SAG audience around (in 2022, they attracted just 1.8 million viewers on TNT and TBS), and as a bonus, it gains content that people will want to watch live.

“For pure-play streaming companies, like Netflix, advertising is purely incremental, although they will have to invest heavily in advertising infrastructure to operate on the same scale as traditional media companies,” Bank of America analyst Jessica Reif Ehrlich wrote in Jan. 13 research report. 

And when it comes to entertainment content, almost all viewing is shifting toward streaming. In that respect it makes sense for entertainment-focused awards shows to exist on the same platforms that people are watching the movies and TV shows on. 

“It’s an essential move in order to continue to garner younger audiences and build fans for the future,” says Matthew Engstrom, vp of marketing for the advertising technology firm Digital Remedy. “For Netflix, this is a big opportunity for ad-supported programming as live TV is less likely to be viewed time-shifted. Netflix now offers a big tentpole media event more likely to be watched live to advertisers looking to take advantage of an ad-supported platform.” 

While the Globes only narrowly avoided a record-low rating, further increasing the likelihood that NBC will wash its hands of the telecast, the HFPA could rebound with a streaming service. If the new privately held Globes does diversify its revenue sources — Todd Boehly’s Eldridge Industries, the owner of the HFPA, the Globes and Dick Clark Productions (which also has a stake in THR), has said he wants to launch Globes-branded events around the world — that could make up for a smaller U.S. TV deal. And that’s to say nothing of streaming’s targeting capabilities.

A future in which a major brand could buy an ad that appears on every screen being watched live, while a smaller brand pays to target a more precisely defined portion of households, could bring the best of both worlds (linear TV’s scale and digital’s targeting) to these platforms. While there’s almost no chance the Globes will score another deal worth $60 million annually, a streaming pact could help to “reset” the brand. With almost all significant live sports rights locked up — the NBA is expected to pursue a streaming deal in its next renewal cycle — any live event with the potential to draw meaningful viewers should get a look from multiple bidders.

“The ability for these new AVOD services to offer targeted advertising may enable more traditional media companies to access advertising dollars that were not available in the linear world,” Bank of America’s Reif Ehrlich wrote. “While linear budgets may be the largest source of funds for increasing AVOD and connected TV advertising budgets, there are numerous other areas from which AVOD could attract dollars.” 

Those 6 million viewers might be a collapse from broadcast TV’s heyday, but it would make for one of the biggest live shows in streaming.

A version of this story first appeared in the Jan. 18 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.