The Morning After: Tony! Tony! Tony!

Every once in a while there’s some hand-wringing over the future of the Tony Awards as a TV event, because fewer people are watching it. I’ve always wondered why as many people watch it as do. Don’t get me wrong: I enjoy a good August: Osage County joke as good as the next guy who’s, um never seen the play, but if anything is a limited-audience show, it’s an awards broadcast devoted to theater in one specific city. And it can’t have helped that last night the show was up against the NBA finals—not that they have the most, shall we say, overlapping audiences. And yet, someone watched. If you were one of them—especially if you’re a non-New Yorker—I’d love to know what drew you. Was it simply the last chance to see Mandy Patinkin on CBS again?