Film Critics Resign Over Critics' Choice Awards Partnering With 'Entertainment Weekly'

A&E, the cable network that broadcasts the Critics' Choice Awards, today announced a new partnership with the magazine Entertainment Weekly. Then, a lot of those critics, who are kind of crucial to an event called the Critics' Choice Awards, simply said "nope."

Multiple members of the Broadcast Television Journalists Association have resigned after the announcement that the network had signed a multi-platform deal with EW to produce content and promote the upcoming awards ceremony, Variety reports.

The content deal, according to Deadline, means that the nominations for the awards will be announced exclusively on EW.com and the People/Entertainment Weekly network.

This apparently rubbed many of those critics the wrong way. After all, they do work for their own respective publications and media companies, and this would mean that those publications wouldn't be able to reveal news on the nominations through their own websites and channels.

"What I loved about the organization, and the awards themselves, was they were never about one media entity," Michael Ausiello of TV Line told Variety. “It was about the entire industry coming together to recognize the best in TV. Unfortunately, it’s now becoming a marketing event built around a single brand, and that’s not a shift I’m comfortable with—even if it’s a brand I happen to love.”

A committee from the Broadcast Television Journalists Association was supposed to start narrowing down the nominees, which the entire membership of the association later votes on, a day after news of the resignations came. It's unclear how they'll proceed from here.

The Critics' Choice Awards, which are set to be hosted by Silicon Valley star T.J. Miller, will air Dec. 11 at 8 p.m.