Film Independent, the nonprofit arts organization that produces the Film Independent Spirit Awards, announced that the 37th annual awards ceremony will take place on Sunday, March 6, 2022 in Los Angeles. Traditionally held the Saturday before the Oscars, the 2022 date marks a shift in the season, placing the Spirit Awards in an earlier juncture squarely in the corridor leading into Oscar voting. While historically an early afternoon affair, the 2022 ceremony will be held at 5pm PST/8pm EST.
The Spirit Awards are the primary fundraiser for Film Independent’s year-round programs, which cultivate the careers of emerging filmmakers and promote diversity and inclusion in the industry.
“The Spirit Awards have always championed diverse, unique, independent storytelling; shifting earlier in the awards season will allow us to shine an even brighter light on the films and shows we are excited to celebrate,” said Josh Welsh, president of Film Independent.
The 36th Film Independent Spirit Awards took place in a virtual ceremony hosted by SNL breakout star Melissa Villaseñor. For the first time in its history, the 2021 Spirit Awards also honored exceptional content in TV.
2020’s Film Independent Spirit Awards recently won a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Writing Team for a Daytime Non-Fiction Special.
More than 67 million people watched Donald Trump and Kamala Harris debate. That’s way up from June
An estimated 67.1 million people watched the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, a sharp increase from the June debate that eventually led to President Joe Biden dropping out of the race.
The debate was run by ABC News but shown on 17 different networks, the Nielsen company said. The Trump-Biden debate in June was seen by 51.3 million people.
Tuesday's count was short of the record viewership for a presidential debate, when 84 million people saw Trump's and Hillary Clinton's first faceoff in 2016. The first debate between Biden and Trump in 2020 reached 73.1 million people.
With Harris widely perceived to have outperformed Trump on Tuesday night, the former president and his supporters are sharply criticizing ABC moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis. The journalists waded into on-the-fly fact checks during the debate, correcting four statements by Trump.
No other debates are currently scheduled between the two presidential candidates, although there's been some talk about it and Fox News Channel has publicly offered alternatives. CBS will host a vice presidential debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance.
Tuesday's debate stakes were high to begin with, not only because of the impending election itself but because the last presidential debate uncorked a series of events that ended several weeks later with Biden's withdrawal from the race after his performance was widely panned.
Opinions on how ABC handled the latest debate Tuesday were, in a large sense, a Rorschach test on how supporters of both sides felt about how it went. MSNBC commentator Chris Hayes sent a message on X that the ABC moderators were doing an "excellent" job — only to be answered by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who said,... Read More