Year after year, I have dutifully watched the Grammy Awards. And the next morning, year after year, I have wondered why.

I’ll be watching on Sunday, when the Grammys air on CBS, but with thoroughly limited expectations. The Grammy show strives each year to keep up with what just happened in music and to ameliorate its past errors. But after a while, blundering along just isn’t funny anymore.

Awards shows are thankless at best; there are invariably complaints about omissions and honest disagreements over winners. Meanwhile, the demands of network television are by no means aligned with the dozens of Grammy Awards that recognize music’s less commercial genres along with the grunt work of making recordings. (The vast majority of the 84 Grammys are handed out in a live-streamed ceremony before the prime-time television spectacle, which only squeezes in about a dozen awards between live performances.)

This year, the Recording Academy is atoning for an unforced error by its outgoing president, Neil Portnow, who ends his term in July. In 2018, he responded to a question about the lack of women receiving televised awards on the show, in line with harsh statistics about the Grammys’ historical lack of recognition for women, by saying that women need to “step up” — apparently oblivious to systemic barriers for women’s careers, not to mention overt harassment. (He later said he regretted his choice of words.)