The pre-telecast event was streamed live on the Grammy website and further afforded another batch of performers a chance to play.
While some Latino artists received their golden gramophones in the Grammys pre-telecast event, the live award ceremony was graced by Bruno Mars, Marc Anthony, and other stars that helped make music's biggest night a success.
In a broader sense, since instituting the ceremony in 2004 to salute the vast majority of musicians not featured on prime-time TV, the Recording Academy has used the pre-telecast event in pursuit of an unspoken goal: letting the world know that the 70 categories not highlighted on television -- mostly classical, jazz, regional music and technical awards -- also matter.
While the motion picture awards gobble up attention, the television categories in recent years have brought much of the star power that makes the Globes telecast an event to watch.
For the first time, CBS will telecast the event with no commercials, and some corporations that usually entertain clients and top executives at the Masters have decided to stay away this year.
People are likely to jam sports bars in both countries to follow live telecasts of events like cross-country skiing's combined pursuit, although they will be broadcast in most of Scandinavia at 3 a.m.
But like many other NBC executives, Wright totally disparaged the comparison to the live telecasts of events being carried by Canadian television, noting that NBC could hardly pay $705 million for rights to the Games and then run them live from 3 a.m. to 8 a.m, as the CBC is doing.
And for the 200,000 fans in gorgeous weather here and millions more watching Fox's telecast, the signature event of this new national pastime was a thriller.
More importantly, when the telecast of this event begins in Britain, we'll get to see how ITV have made a mammoth pig's ear of their World Cup title sequence this time round.
The night before the championship was settled, a decision to have Fullerton and Miami play through a driving rain to produce a finalist in time for this afternoon's CBS network telecast became the event's latest growing pain.
But the electrifying showing by the swimmer nicknamed the "Iron Lady" also stirred up plenty of buzz outside the pool, which began with controversial comments from NBC's telecast following the event.
