The strike of Hollywood screenwriters affected the plans of the organizers of the Tony Awards gala, the most important award ceremony dedicated to theatrical productions staged on Broadway, DPA informs.

The Tony Awards Committee and CBS announced on Friday that they are canceling the telecast of this year’s gala, scheduled for June 11, according to a source close to the organizers. The decision came after the Writers Guild of America (WGA) refused to call off its strike to allow the gala’s producers to hold the ceremony live without groups of strikers protesting outside the New York building where the event was to take place.

Organizers feared the telecast would be doomed because of strikers picketing the Tony Awards. In the absence of big names in the entertainment industry, such a telecast might seem strange at best.

The theater workers belong to different unions, but the longtime station that broadcasts the Tony Awards, CBS, is part of the Motion Picture and Television Producers Alliance, the group against which the WGA began this strike.

WGA representatives could not be reached for comment at this time. Representatives for the Tony Awards, which is affiliated with the Broadway League, a national union that represents the interests of the commercial theater industry, and representatives for the American Theater Wing, a nonprofit that supports the theater community, did not respond to requests for comment. .

The Tony Awards have long been considered a prestigious event on the CBS schedule, but the event itself is more important to Broadway producers, who rely on the media exposure provided by the national television network to promote their shows. The telecast is considered a good advertisement for shows currently running on Broadway. Oftentimes, shows that don’t fill theaters continue to play anyway in the hopes that winning that gala will increase ticket sales.

The decision to cancel the live broadcast of the Tony Awards comes as many theater productions are struggling to rebuild their finances after the COVID-19 pandemic caused Broadway theaters to close for 18 months.

The Tony Awards’ steering committee and CBS will meet on Monday to determine whether they want to hold a pre-recorded gala, including musical performances, or simply postpone the entire event until the strike ends.

The 76th Tony Awards became the first major live show to be affected by the Hollywood writers’ strike. The event was to be broadcast live from the United Palace in New York in two parts: the first set of awards was to be presented in a pre-show ceremony to be broadcast on the Pluto TV platform, followed by the main ceremony to be broadcast on CBS and the platform Paramount+.

The decision of the organizers of the Tony Awards gala concert was made just a few days after the changes approved last week by the management of MTV. The network decided to pre-tap the MTV Movie & TV Awards gala at the last minute after actress Drew Barrymore refused to host the ceremony live and the WGA union announced it would bring in strikers to picket the venue. will be held – Barker Hangar in Santa Monica. And the red carpet ceremony was canceled after the invited stars announced that they would no longer attend the event