The Award Shows Of The Pandemic: 15 Televised Ceremonies, Ranked

It's been a long, strange year for the entertainment industry — and it brought with it a long, strange award season, too.

Ever since the coronavirus pandemic forced us indoors in March 2020, Hollywood has tried its best to keep its usual event calendar, resulting in an array of outdoor, socially distanced or, in some cases, completely virtual award shows.

With the (pretty terrible) Oscars now behind us, award season is officially over, and we're reflecting on the major ceremonies that aired, against all odds, during the past year. Below, we've ranked 15 of those events from worst to best, judging them not only on production value and technical excellence, but also on how well they adhered to COVID safety protocols. (Not all of them passed that test!)

In addition to award season staples like the Primetime Emmys and Grammys, our list also features impressive endeavors like the Nashville-based Academy of Country Music Awards, a completely remote staging of the BET Awards and perhaps the shortest Screen Actors Guild Awards of all time, among others. (We'd love to recognize the 74th Tony Awards here, too... but they still haven't happened.)

Scroll through the list below to see which award show claimed the No. 1 spot, then hit the comments with your own rankings!

Some solid musical performances came out of the 54th Country Music Association Awards... but they were all eclipsed by what appeared to be a shirking of COVID protocols throughout the show. A CMA rep told TVLine that "every single person" entering the venue was tested for the coronavirus, maintaining that both the music association and ABC were "extremely diligent" in keeping the ceremony safe. But in November 2020 — as COVID cases in the United States surged, and large swaths of the population expressed anti-mask sentiment — the CMAs' indoor, often-maskless ceremony set a poor example at a time when we couldn't afford such careless messaging.

Airing more than a year after the pandemic began, the Oscars had ample time to come up with a show that was both COVID-safe and entertaining; with creative risk-takers like Steven Soderbergh on the production team, one would assume the ceremony would feel fresh and engaging as it celebrated a visual medium. Instead, we got three-plus hours of talking. So, so, so much talking. While honoring the beauty of cinema, the Oscars inexplicably eschewed almost all visual aids throughout the show, opting for long-winded, spoken praise of the nominees over actual clips of the films in question. (The entire Best Costume Design category came and went without a single glimpse of the costumes! How?!)

Making it all much worse, the monotonous affair ended not with Best Picture, but the award for Best Actor, a format shake-up seemingly designed to conclude the show with an emotional, posthumous win for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom actor Chadwick Boseman. But Anthony Hopkins won over Boseman in an upset, Hopkins wasn't even there to accept the honor, and the whole thing landed with a thud as Joaquin Phoenix joylessly wrapped up the show.

CBS had the good sense to pre-shoot the 47th Daytime Emmys, which was the first major award show to air after quarantine had begun. To that end, we didn't have to cringe through any technical mishaps as The Talk's five cohosts (at the time) announced the winners... but after two hours, the fully remote show felt a bit snoozy.

For a show with an all-virtual audience — that is to say, hundreds of tiny Zoom squares simultaneously shown on the Barker Hangar stage — the People's Choice Awards had surprisingly few technical glitches or awkward lags in video production. Still, that long corridor of faces in rectangles gave us Black Mirror vibes, and not in a good way. (As if there were a good way.)

We're admittedly not the target audience for Nickelodeon's colorful kudosfest — and the near-constant sound of cheering from the virtual audience did get a bit old — but we can still appreciate a well-produced show, and this year's Kids' Choice Awards were as seamless and slimy as ever.

After an impressive showing by the Primetime Emmys (more on that later), we had high hopes for the Golden Globes, which would presumably benefit from more preparation time and the returns of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler as hosts. But the Globes turned out disappointingly messy, starting with a muted audio feed for Daniel Kaluuya after he won the night's first award. And though the Globes' bicoastal approach seemed fun in theory — Poehler hosted from Los Angeles, Fey from New York City — it was more of a strange gimmick that added little entertainment value beyond the photo above.

This was Anthony Anderson's eighth (!) time as NAACP Image Awards host, and he led the proceedings with confidence and charisma. But with most of the action taking place on one stage — where Anderson stood in front of a screen, cutting to remotely produced segments — the broadcast started feeling stale around the halfway mark.

A middle-of-the-list placement feel right for NBC's staging of the Billboard Music Awards, which were neither terribly messy nor particularly buzzy. The audience was virtual, the performances (namely En Vogue's "Free Your Mind") were excellent, and the overall broadcast was solid — and that's all we can really ask for in times like these.

Similarly, the AMAs came and went with no real hoopla last year — but we did appreciate the addition of a small, socially distanced live audience at the Microsoft Theater, which reminded us how much we missed the sound of people cheering. Or the sound of people doing anything in close proximity!

The BET Awards went entirely remote for their 2020 ceremony, but found opportunities along the way to break the monotony and give us striking visuals. For example, even though the musical performances weren't live, each one — like Megan Thee Stallion's epic "Girls in the Hood" and "Savage Remix" combo — was filmed like an elaborate music video. And on the hosting side, Amanda Seales (The Real) gave funny, incisive commentary on politics and culture throughout the night.

At the time, yes, the MTV VMAs felt a bit dystopian, thanks in part to Lady Gaga's collection of increasingly Mad Max: Fury Road-esque face masks (pictured above). But looking back, we've gotta hand it to the cable net for pulling off a safe, exciting, in-person event just a few months into the pandemic, at a time when even the notion of live concerts seemed ridiculous and a little scary.

By the time the ACM Awards aired in September 2020, we knew we'd been missing the magic of live music — but we didn't realize just how much. Enter this refreshingly creative ceremony, which rotated throughout different music venues in Nashville, serving up audience-free live performances from the likes of Taylor Swift, Luke Bryan, Eric Church and a never-better Carrie Underwood. (The 2021 ACMs aired April 18, using the same format as the 2020 broadcast.)

Zoom fatigue was extremely real for all of us when the 2021 SAG Awards rolled around in April, so TBS wisely kept the show short. The lean, one-hour ceremony — which kicked off with a delightful Ted Lasso sketch — was pre-taped, blessedly leaving us with only the highlights of the evening, like Yuh-Jung Youn's sweet acceptance speech for Female Actor in a Supporting Role.

Thanks to Jennifer Aniston's quick work with a fire extinguisher, television's biggest night did not go up in flames, either literally or metaphorically. And though this wasn't the first award show to air during quarantine, it was certainly one of the fall's most complicated live productions, with dozens of celebrities appearing remotely while Jimmy Kimmel and select presenters held down the fort in person at the Staples Center. You'd never know, though, that so many plates were spinning behind the scenes; the final product was so expertly directed and smoothly produced that the show almost — almost! — felt like old times.

We'll be honest: Even when we're not living through a pandemic, the Grammys give us some award show fatigue, courtesy of their slightly bonkers three-and-a-half-hour (!) runtime. Thus, this year's socially distant broadcast was not only the award season's biggest highlight, but also its most pleasant surprise. Anchored by a suave, low-key hosting performance from The Daily Show's Trevor Noah, the Grammys were tightly paced and extremely engaging throughout, with strict COVID protocols making way for innovative staging and an outdoor ceremony full of camaraderie. Plus, it gave us Harry Styles in those boas. For that alone, it wins.