The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) has cancelled its full-length awards banquet and telecast on January 13 because of the writers strike and instead will announce the Golden Globe winners in a simple press conference on the same day.

The HFPA will unveil the winners in 25 categories of the 65th Golden Globes during an hour-long press conference at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills that will be broadcast live on Sunday evening on NBC.

The group's hand was forced after the Screen Actors Guild decided not to allow members to attend the event as nominees or presenters out of sympathy for the striking writers.

'We are all very disappointed that our traditional awards ceremony will not take place this year and that millions of viewers worldwide will be deprived of seeing many of their favourite stars celebrating 2007's outstanding achievements in motion pictures and television,' HFPA president Jorge Camara said.

'We take some comfort, however, in knowing that this year's Golden Globe Award recipients will be announced on the date originally scheduled.'

The negotiations over whether the Golden Globes show could or would take place have been on and off for weeks.

The WGA specifically targeted the event for pickets while letting other awards shows - the Critics Choice Awards, the SAG Awards, the Independent Spirit Awards, all televised by major companies - go ahead unhampered.

The guild also declined to grant a waiver to Dick Clark Productions, the production company behind the Globes telecast, which was offering the same terms as David Letterman's Worldwide Pants for its CBS talk show programmes - which was granted a waiver.

There are no signs that the producers, as represented by the the Alliance Of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP), will return to the negotiating table with the WGA, which now leaves the Feb 24 Academy Awards show as the next target for writer disruption.

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