ALMA Awards Honorees Announced

I already told you about the ALMA Awards' hosting tweak—that George Lopez will co-host with Eva Longoria this year. Now, a list of honorees and performers has been announced. Salma Hayek and Oscar De la Hoya will be among the honorees and Pitbull and Selena Gomez among the performers at the award show, which air September 18 at 8PM ET/7C on ABC. They are part of a show that just got bigger...and a bit weirder, focusing less on competition and more on celebration, but diluting the meaning of the award in the process.

The list of honorees (that's what the ALMAs call them, instead of nominees, to emphasize that everyone is being celebrated, I guess) is a long, bulging list, with just about anyone who did anything in front or behind a TV or movie camera shoved into general acting and behind the scenes categories, some of which have as many as 20 honorees. There's no distinction between lead and supporting actors and actresses. There's a separate catch-all category that includes producers, directors, writers, and makeup artists.

There's a strange, bloated category called the Year in Sports Television, filled with names of athletes like golfer Lorena Ochoa and baseball player Albert Pujols, which means what? That only athletes whose games make it onto TV are eligible to be honored? Bizarre.

I get it. The ALMA producers, which include Longoria, have compiled a huge list of people to maximize star-power and the show's ratings. Who can blame them? But at some point, when you lump Amaury Nolasco in the same category as 24's Carlos Bernard, you have to wonder what the ALMAs are meant to reward? I like Amaury, but does he really need to be honored for his acting? Give him a few more years to work on it.

One thing I am looking forward to is a tribute to Ricardo Montalban, led by Rita Moreno. Montalban was a trailblazer, one of a generation that had to take on crappy, stereotypical roles in order to claw their way up the Hollywood food chain and pave the way for Latinos who came afterward, who now have to take on fewer crappy roles. I hope that all the honorees realize what he did for them. He was a true icon.