LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Four years after the Emmy Awards were twice postponed in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the devastation of Hurricane Katrina is exerting a far more subtle force on U.S. television's biggest night.
The three-hour live CBS broadcast is going on as planned on Sunday from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles with no special moment being set aside to contemplate the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history.
But the show's executive producer, Ken Ehrlich, said on Thursday he expected Louisiana-born Emmy emcee Ellen DeGeneres, who earned rave reviews as host of the post-9/11 show in 2001, to acknowledge Katrina's victims in her monologue at the start of this year's telecast.
The August 29 hurricane killed more than 700 people in the U.S. Gulf Coast region and displaced 1 million.
Other performers appearing on the 57th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards will likely mention the disaster as well. The show's celebrity presenters will be offered magnolias, the state flower of storm-hit Louisiana and Mississippi, to wear as corsages and boutonnieres during the show, Ehrlich said.
On-screen messages during the telecast will urge viewers to direct their hurricane-relief donations to the charity home-construction organization Habitat for Humanity.
Ehrlich said Katrina was also sure to resonate in a segment of the show paying tribute to Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and the late Peter Jennings, the longtime evening news anchors of the Big Three broadcast networks -- NBC, CBS and ABC.
In light of the widely praised coverage of Katrina and its grim aftermath by broadcast journalists in recent weeks, "we have a renewed sense of importance of what news is all about," Ehrlich said.
Brokaw and Rather, who both left their broadcasts within the past year, are slated to take the Emmy stage together following a montage of highlights from their careers and that of Jennings, who died of lung cancer in August.
'LITTLE BIT OF HEALING'
Plenty of lighter moments are planned, too, and Ehrlich said that after three weeks of images of despair and destruction from the Gulf Coast, he hoped a show like the Emmys could offer the public "the beginning of a little bit of healing."
The Emmys are traditionally held each year in September to honor the best of prime time and to kick off a new season of shows. Continued ...
© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.
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