An announcement today from CBS:

CBS has ordered three new alternative/reality series for broadcast later this year — the biweekly celebrity talent contest SECRET TALENTS OF THE STARS, the hidden camera game show GAME SHOW IN MY HEAD and the search for AMERICA'S TOP DOG. The series were announced by Ghen Maynard, Executive Vice President, Alternative Programming & Entertainment Content for New Media, CBS Paramount Network Television Entertainment Group.

AMERICA'S TOP DOG (working title) is a new one hour-long series where "man's best friend" can help its owner win big money! Owners and their pets — from "pageant dogs" to those dogs simply trained at home — will live together and battle it out in a dog competition that puts the dog's relationship with the person who has raised and trained it to the test. In the end, only one team of loving owner and faithful dog will emerge the winner in this dog-eat-dog competition!

Now, in any given year, networks are going to order unscripted stuff. But the ongoing strike makes that kind of thing all the more likely. And with something like "Secret Talents of the Stars," you can get celebs on the air in a format that shouldn't invite picket lines. CBS hopes.

Well, the Golden Globes have come and gone, almost in a blink, and it tells us something very important about awards shows …

The awards don't matter.

All right, they matter some. Congratulatory ads will generate tons of revenue for the show-biz trade publications. And movies and TV shows looking for an extra bump will tout their Globe wins while promoting themselves.

But last night's Globes announcements, the remains of a famously glitzy ceremony derailed by the writers strike, showed how little the awards themselves matter when it comes to making television.

Zipping through a reading of nominated names, with clips, and then announcing winners, the Globes telecast had no glamour, no unpredictability, nothing to move us to tears, no gaffes that could mark careers forever. It just had, well, awards. And while people have noted before that some viewers consider the gowns, the goofs and the talk to be the most important part of big awards shows, last night proved that they're not the most important. They're the only important things.

NBC tried to make a little something from the Globes announcement. Instead of carrying the press conference (since it had lost its exclusive on that and people could find it on other channels), it packaged the nominees, clips, winner announcements and what might very generously be considered analysis by Bush and Nancy O'Dell.

I won't argue that Amy Ryan in "Gone Baby Gone" was a deserving contender, and I wouldn't have been too bothered if she had won over Cate Blanchett in "I'm Not There." But Bush said he was "a little bit shocked." "I thought Amy Ryan for sure. Amy Ryan has been there a long time. She's almost two decades, her career. Two Tony nominations. She's a real seasoned actress. People loved her performance. And I think at the end of the day, with Cate Blanchett, it's a woman imitating a man."

Blanchett was not merely "imitating a man." She was taking a well-documented period in Bob Dylan's life — one that's heavily on film — and gathering a lot of Dylan's mannerisms and still finding a character, and doing it all marvelously.

Again, no knock on Ryan. But her having two Tony nominations is not a way to judge a single performance. Nor is the length of her career, even though Bush seemed to view longevity as an important touchstone for acting; with Jon Hamm's win for "Mad Men," Bush noted "he's been around for awhile." I think Hamm was very good also. But, at best, you can look at Bush's comments as a reflection not of what's quality but the sort of sentimental nonsense that inspires awards voters to do their worst.

Still, the abbreviated Globes — like CBS's clumsy attempt to air the People's Choice Awards without a ceremony — say that Hollywood might just as well forget about awards and throw a couple of big, rowdy parties for the cameras every year. Unfortunately, based on awards evidence to date, those parties would go on too long, some of the guests would insist on singing and late in the evening everyone's wits would be dulled. Even more unfortunately, a lot of stars wouldn't show up — unless there was a chance of going home with a statuette.

I know, he's dead. But I'm thinking about what his philosophy of television might bring to the writer-struck medium right now, especially for the late-night talk-show hosts who are Allen's heirs.

Then again, I saw Jon Stewart back on his game Tuesday night, and wondered if this whole idea was really "Naah." More after the jump …

I started thinking about the Steve Allen scenario while looking at my recording of Monday's Conan O'Brien show. Conan is getting some good notices for his efforts without writers, and Monday's show was all right. A bit based on items in the NBC Store was funny if a bit overlong. And in the interview segments, Conan seemed completely engaged — pretty much wired by the stimulation of a conversation that, even with notes and (I'm figuring) a pre-interview, still felt as if it could go anywhere.

I then went back and looked at Craig Ferguson's first show since the strike began. Not very good, and Craig can seem nuts. (I also think he's right about the resemblance to Liza Minnelli.) And this with writers! But the show also seemed ready to try almost anything, including sketches and weird Ferguson monologues in lieu of guests.

At this point, let me bring Steve Allen back from the grave, courtesy of his book "Hi-Ho, Steverino," although he made this point plenty of other times, including in an interview I did with him in the early '90s.

"I indeed did a talk show," Allen said, "but it's not correct to describe 'Tonight' during ny three-and-a-half years as host … as essentiallya talk show. It was something much more creaitve — an experimental TV laboratory. One night we'd book, say, the Count Basie band and let them do twenty-five minutes of music. The next evening our show might be structured in the form of a debate …; on other occasions, we might present a full-fledged, thirty-minute drama, ad-lib comedy routines in the street, or do exciting remote telecasts from Hollywood, Miami, Chicago, or Niagara Falls."

Allen also notes that he did single-guest shows (with Fred Allen among others) and on another show ended up singing "Home on the Range" with Carl Sandburg and the actor Charles Coburn.

In other words — and I mean this in the best possible way — Allen did a lot of messing around.

Right now, there seems to be a big opportunity for messing around. Conan, to be sure, has always had some of that, and a bit like the German disco light show could easily fit into the pre-strike Conan telecasts. Ferguson, for that matter, had his writers back when I watched him. But I think there was still a feeling at the show that it was a good time to mess around.

So the biggest mistake that the late-night hosts might make right now, with or without writers, is to try to replicate their old formulas in some fashion. Instead, this is the time to break out of the formula and to do so enthusiastically. Look at what the People's Choice Awards did last night — as Queen Latifah said, "a little different from last time." And I won't pretend that what they tried actually worked. It took the spontaneity and the potentional for surprise out of the show, and leaned heavily on clips. But it was an attempt to do an awards show outside of the traditional format.

So should programmers use the strike as a reason to blow things up? It would be interesting to see them try. But, as I said, the People's Choice Awards format wasn't all that good. And then there's Jon Stewart.

In a previous post I argued that his show had a lot of problems on Monday night. Tuesday was a refreshing, smart, funny return to the sort of political commentary and poking at authority that the show does best. The monologue had more bite. And Stewart's interview of conservative author David Frum was classic, Stewart ripping up the overmatched Frum in very funny, but pointed fashion.

Frum works for Giuliani, which not only gave Stewart an opening for another joke about Giuliiani's use of 9/11 (and I loved Stewart's earlier reaction to the Giuliani-on-Hillary's-emotions clip.) But the best moment may have been when Stewart argued that fringe candidate Ron Paul was the most conservative candidate in a party that claims to be conservative.

"He's one of those people, the more you learn about him, the more disturbing a personality he becomes," Frum said.

"You should check into your guy," Stewart replied.

And, gleefully: "My brain's not on strike, brother!" And proved it later with the "President Homer" line.

So is Stewart demonstrating that the old formats are fine once people get back in their comfort zones? Probably. But that doesn't mean occasional daring is called for. Opportunities for such wholesale change come rarely. The last time I can remember in late-night was after 9/11, when the talk-show hosts were trying to figure out how to do their shows and deal with the immensity of that event. But, soon enough, it was back to the old way of doing business. And once the strike is over, collective amnesia may come fairly quickly.

Unless, of course, in this window, people see a new way of doing things that actually works. And the best way to find that is to just mess around.

Because it appeared unlikely that any stars would cross the picket line for a Golden Globes awards ceremony, the ceremony per se has been dropped in favor of a news conference and maybe some companion programming.

Associated Press report here. New York Times story here. Nikki Finke's coverage here and throughout Deadline Hollywood Daily.

This is a big blow by the writers against the show-biz establishment. Coupled with the reformatting of the People's Choice Awards airing tomorrow night, it is an ominous development for the Oscars, since the strike will probably still be going then.

While the writers are drawing the line on issues that seriously affect their future, when does the halting of popular programming begin to create a backlash? What will be the reaction of a viewer who tunes in for alcohol-swilling celebrities dressed well but acting silly, and gets instead a Golden Globes press conference?

On Sunday, the bride and I were furniture shopping and the store operator wanted to talk about how long the strike was going to last. His family wanted "Grey's Anatomy" back with new episodes. (There is a new one on Thursday but I think that's it.) To be sure, the networks are trying to come up with the new or next to new, emptying the shelves of backup series or, as I mentioned earlier today, moving something like "Dexter" from cable to broadcast. But there could still be a point where sympathy for writers gives way to "hey, there's nothing good on."

There are so many videos being posted by striking writers, some enterprising entity (Comedy Central, hello!) should follow up the strike with an TV special collecting the best of the clips. I've already mentioned the stuff from "The Office," and here's an item from Bob Kushell of "Samantha Who?" (I found it via Deadline Hollywood Daily.)

OK, so it's not all that funny. Neither is "Samantha Who?"
You may also want to check out the videos at Speechlesswithoutwriters.com like this one:

I tend to read Nikki Finke of Deadline Hollywood Daily first on this stuff, and she's not full of great news in this post. …

Here's her bottom line:
I'm going to wait until I receive a report about Wednesday's talks before I begin passing judgment on what's happening, or not happening, here. But I must say that Day #2 certainly puts a damper on all those wishful-thinking rumors sweeping Hollywood and beyond — but not here at DHD — that the strike would be settled by December 8th.

At the same time, she has some nice photos of horror writers picketing one studio as an exorcism of studio evil. One sample: