Let Tony's be the Tony's

NY Sun's David Blum agrees with me that the Tony's won't register more than a blip on the National TV radar until they return to their elite urban sophisticate roots and revert to the backslapping martini-sipping banquet setting of its origins. Let Broadway be Broadway, I say. By competing with the Oscars they've not only bottomed out in the ratings, but embarrassed theatre people everywhere.

Blum is wrong, of course, about the Pulitzer dis this year signifying that "the great new plays just don't turn up with the regularity they once did." If he peeked in at the other less millionaire-exclusive awards ceremonies of late, he'd see the interesting new plays cropping up everywhere else but in 500-plus-seat houses in Times Square.