The 75th annual Tony Awards will return to CBS and Paramount+ for a dual streaming and broadcast event on June 12 that will air live coast to coast for the first time, the networks announced Wednesday.
The ceremony, which will be held at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall, will honor the best of Broadway in a season that got off to a late start due to the gradual reopening of theaters last summer and fall amid the COVID pandemic.
The ceremony will kick off with an hour of exclusive content streaming only on Paramount+ beginning at 7 p.m. ET / 4 p.m. PT, followed by a three-hour ceremony airing live on CBS as well as streaming on Paramount+ from 8-11 p.m. ET / 5-8 p.m. PT. In recent years, the Tonys have handed out most below-the-line categories outside of the main CBS broadcast, announcing those winners during the broadcast.
Last September’s Tony Awards — held to honor a 2019-20 Broadway season that was dramatically shortened when the COVID pandemic shut down theaters in March 2020 — settled for 2.6 million total viewers on CBS. That was less than half of the 5.4 million viewers the show got in 2019 — an all-time low at the time.
The ceremony, jointly presented by The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing, will recognize new shows that have opened since Broadway reopened last fall, with an eligibility cut-off of April 28. Nominations are due to be announced on May 3.
This year’s contenders include big musical revivals like “The Music Man” with Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster,” “Funny Girl” with Beanie Feldstein and “Company” with Katrina Lenk and Patti LuPone.
New musical contenders include the pop musical “Six,” the Michael Jackson biomusical “MJ” and musical versions of familiar IP like “The Little Prince,” “Mrs. Doubtfire” and Billy Crystal’s “Mr. Saturday Night.”
