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Grammy Awards indefinitely postponed as Omicron spreads

Grammy Awards indefinitely postponed as Omicron spreads

The show was scheduled to take place in Los Angeles and be broadcast live on January 31.
06 Jan, 2022

This year's Grammy Awards ceremony honouring top performances in music has been postponed indefinitely because of the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, organisers said on Wednesday.

The show had been scheduled to take place at an arena in downtown Los Angeles and broadcast live on the CBS network on January 31.

"Given the uncertainty surrounding the Omicron variant, holding the show on January 31 simply contains too many risks," CBS and the Recording Academy said in a joint statement, adding that a new date would be announced soon.

Nominations for the awards were announced in November. Pianist and bandleader Jon Batiste led a field that spanned rap to jazz music and embraced newcomers from teen pop sensation Olivia Rodrigo to veteran crooner Tony Bennett, 95, who won his first Grammy in 1963.

Pakistani singer Arooj Aftab also secured a place on the nominations list and was the first Pakistani woman to do so. She was nominated in the Best New Artist category alongside Rodrigo, FINNEAS and others.

The 2021 Grammy awards also were postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The ceremony was staged in March instead of January and included a mix of pre-recorded and live segments in front of a small, socially distanced crowd.

Organisers had hoped to return this year to something closer to the traditional celebration with a large audience inside the former Staples Center, now called Crypto.com Arena. Late-night television host Trevor Noah had been tapped to host the event.

CBS and the Recording Academy said they consulted local officials, health experts and artists before deciding to scrap the January date.

"The health and safety of those in our music community, the live audience and the hundreds of people who work tirelessly to produce our show remains our top priority," they said.

Other entertainment industry events have been delayed or scaled back.

Organisers of this month's Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, said on Tuesday they had canceled in-person events and would move them online.

The Critics Choice Awards, which had been set for this Sunday, have been postponed with no new date scheduled.

Comments

NYS Jan 06, 2022 03:40pm
Displeasure
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Dr. Salaria, Aamir Ahmad Jan 06, 2022 03:50pm
Better safe than sorry to save precious human lives amid the rapidly expanding, fleetingly growing, ever increasing and almost unstoppable Indian-Delta and South African variants of Covid-19, currently spreading like wildfires all over the world & causing widespread inflections, deaths, devastations and destruction in every nook and corner of the world including but not limited to the U.S., Canada, South, Central and Larin America, Mexico, Columbia, Brazil, Argentina, E.U., Scandinavia, Africa, South and Central Asia, Far, Near and Middle East, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand.
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