Awards shows love to talk about “evolving.” But this year, when the Golden Globe Awards bumped Best Original Score off the televised broadcast while making room for extensive ad breaks and a new Best Podcast category, they aided the degradation of cinema on a world stage.

Because here’s the blunt truth: a score can elevate an entire film, and enhances the moviegoing experience for audience. Music dictates pacing, tension, memory. It tells you when to breathe, when to panic, when to feel something you didn’t know you were ready to feel — this also makes the silent moments in movies feel more intense (when score is temporarily stripped away for lingering suspense).

You don’t remember ‘Jaws’ because of the shark. You remember two notes.
You don’t feel dread in ‘Oppenheimer’ because of exposition, you feel it because the score tightens the vise. Yet somehow, the people who literally create that emotional experience were deemed too expendable for live television — or rather, too unclickable.

And Best Podcast? Be Serious.

Podcasts are great. Truly. They’re creative, influential, and culturally massive. They are also not film or television.

A podcast does not use cinematography. It does not involve editing grammar, blocking, production design, or visual performance. It does not belong at an awards show explicitly branded around movies and TV — especially not at the expense of a foundational filmmaking discipline.

This isn’t expansion. It’s category confusion masquerading as relevance.

If the Globes want to court younger audiences or audio storytelling spaces, fine. Build a podcast awards show. Partner with one. Sponsor one. Don’t shove podcasts into a ceremony by quietly escorting composers out the side door.

Televising Best Podcast while hiding Best Original Score sends a crystal-clear message: Craft doesn’t matter. Virality does. Artistry can wait. Branding can’t.

That’s how you end up with a show that feels hollow — slick, buzzy, and strangely empty, despite all the applause. When you erase the people who are a huge part in shaping a film’s soul, you’re left celebrating the shell.

Even Hans Zimmer — a household name — had to call this out publicly. If he isn’t safe from being sidelined, what does that say about how little respect the medium has for the craft?

Put Best Original Score back on the broadcast. Remove Best Podcast from the ceremony. Stop pretending this is about time constraints when it’s clearly about optics.

Because if the Golden Globes can’t find three minutes to honor the people who make movies feel like movies, then maybe silence is exactly what they deserve.

At the 2026 Golden Globe Awards, the Best Original Score award was won by Ludwig Göransson for his groundbreaking score for Ryan Coogler’s ‘Sinners.’ Göransson is the favorite to win the Oscar in March. He took the trophy over fellow nominees including Alexandre Desplat (‘Frankenstein’), Jonny Greenwood (‘One Battle After Another’), Max Richter (‘Hamnet’), Kangding Ray (‘Sirāt’), and Hans Zimmer (‘F1’).

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