Those watching the Tony Awards this past Sunday night may have noticed something a little different: There was no "In Memoriam" photo montage. The segment was cut from live TV and instead shown only to Radio City audience members.
It was later made available online.
Shawn Purdy, a spokeswoman for Tony Award Productions, told the New York Times that the cut enabled them to include more people this way:
Presenting in this manner allowed us to include more individuals than we have been able to include most years, and as a result, more accurately reflected the depth of loss suffered by our community this past year.
But, as the Times pointed out, this year's montage ran roughly two minutes and 40 seconds long, about the same length as last year's that featured Cindy Lauper.
Many die-hard theater fans felt upset that CBS decided not to dedicate three minutes to honor Broadway industry members, especially in light of them closing the show with Jennifer Hudson performing a song from Finding Neverland, a new musical that hasn't even begun showing in Cambridge, Mass. yet, and which she is hardly involved in.
The opening number and the Music Man rap featuring non-Broadway stars LL Cool J and T.I. also faced criticism.
So we got rapping Shipoopi instead of the in memoriam? Stay classy, #Tonys.
No "In Memoriam" sequence in #TonyAwards broadcast. If the Tonys leadership doesn't care about the heritage of theatre, why should anyone?
2014 In Memoriam - Tony Awards: http://t.co/M0iYFRoHXq sharing since the Tony's didn't think it important enough to actually air
I would easily trade the hopping around and signing of the nominees for simple "in memoriam". Another Tony fail. Too many things left out!!!
So there was enough time for 5 minutes of hopping, 2 song 'trailers' and a stupid, godawful rap but not the In Memoriam segment? Bad Tonys.
Needless to say, fans are upset and hope to see the memoriam segment air on the 2015 Tony Awards.
Jennifer Hudson will be involved in the Finding Neverland concept album.