The 25th Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film and television for 1967, were held on 12 February 1968.
Scandal resulting in FCC ban
The FCC imposed a ban on NBC's broadcast of the Golden Globes after the February 1968 ceremony.[1]Movie criticRex Reed, in a contemporary article about the broadcast, wrote:
NBC's telcast of the Foreign Press Association's 25th annual Golden Globe Awards had to be seen to be disbelieved. The Federal Communications Commission have sent laywers to have it investigated. But award-giving, pointless as it is, is still big business, and it also gives viewers a chance to see their favorite stars make fools of themselves in public, so the Golden Globes were back, minus some of their sponsors, who backed out at the last minute....
Just last week Newsweek reported denials from the Foreign Press Association that its members give awards to the stars who throw the biggest feeds. "We are not influenced by a glass of champagne," snapped [HFPA President Howard] Luft, "Kirk Douglas threw a party last year, and what did he win? Nothing."
This year there was even a special category called the Cecil B. DeMille Humanitarian Award. Who won? You guessed it. Kirk Douglas.[2]
The FCC was spurred to action because the public had been misled as to how the awards were actually made. Golden Globe broadcast advertisers determined Golden Globe winners and the HFPA pressured nominees to attend the award ceremony by threatening to award the Golden Globe won by a non-attendee to a losing nominee who was at the ceremony. The ban lasted until 1974.[1]
After the ban, NBC once again broadcast the awards ceremony, but it terminated its contract with the HFPA after the Pia Zadora scandal of 1982.