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Topic: Oscars Won't Televise All Awards Live, Gets Shorter, and Adds Popular Film Category

Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 09-10-2018 05:14 PM

I'll bet the idea dies a quiet death.

But then they're back to square one... how to increase ratings for a show that honors movies nobody wants to see?

They're never going to just scrap the TV show... it's too much of a cash cow.

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Mitchell Dvoskin
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1869
From: West Milford, NJ, USA
Registered: Jan 2001

posted 09-11-2018 12:39 PM

> how to increase ratings for a show that honors movies nobody wants to see?

Just for starters, I would:

1. Get rid of those boring musical numbers. I tune in to watch the awards, not a variety show.

2. Get rid of goofy unrelated stunts. I tune in to watch the awards, not a variety show.

3. Change the qualification from playing one week in Los Angeles county to the film being in the top 30 grossing films of the prior year (for all categories). That will have the added benefit of requiring the promoting of Oscar hopefuls not only to Academy members, but the public at large. To make things fair, I suppose they also could have an exception to this for independently distributed films of a limited budget.

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 09-11-2018 01:00 PM

Your #3 would sure help the ratings, but it'd get more screams from Hollywood than the previous "best popular film" idea.

In addition to your #1 and 2, I would ban politics from the event. Any celeb that launched into a political rant would be immediately "played off." If they want to get some political message out, let 'em buy commercial time.

There's a lot of "screw Hollywood" sentiment going around the country thanks to all the political clap-trap in the awards shows. I have reminded more than one person who says they're not going to support so-and-so's movie, that they are also hurting their local mom'n'pop movie theater with that stance, even though we don't have a thing to do with the star's politics. Without fail, they say they never thought of it that way.

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Marcel Birgelen
Film God

Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 09-11-2018 03:45 PM

Idea #4: The voting Academy Members are instructed that in both voting for nominees and winners they should consider the popularity of a movie as an important weighting factor in their decisions.

Idea #5: The public nominates the movies for each category and the Academy members vote on the nominees.

I'm pretty doubtful about Idea #4 and regarding #5, public voting for other big-shot events has often shown to be highly politically motivated.

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 09-11-2018 08:17 PM

The whole thing is probably all governed by money anyway.... if you subscribe to the Hollywood Reporter, you know what I mean. It's unbelievable the amount of money studios spend to promote their Oscar hopefuls, and the ads and "special" promo gimmicks get ever-more elaborate the closer the voting gets.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 09-11-2018 10:00 PM

quote: Mitchell Dvoskin
Most popular does not require a vote, the boxoffice dollars speak for themselves.

I was wondering about that, too. If this award had been done on the same voting system as the others, how would AMPAS have explained it if the "most popular" Oscar had then been won by a Lithuanian feminist arthouse pic that only sold about 17 tickets on three university campuses?

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 09-11-2018 10:18 PM

I think the Oscars needs to go in a different direction: actually reward the most acclaimed movies and movie-makers rather than respond to whoever runs the best Oscar advertising campaigns in the Hollywood Reporter, Variety and other movie trade publications. The Oscar is actually on a rung lower in legitimacy than certain critics circle awards due to the influence of those ad campaigns and other unethical crap, such as some Academy Member voters showing favoritism in their votes, not actually seeing all the movies, letting their assistants fill out the ballots, etc.

I disagree with the idea of just giving the Oscar to the movie that grosses the most money that year. A top money making movie is already getting the biggest (and best in most cases) award: money. The biggest money making movies earn other awards anyway. There's already long-running "popular" awards shows, like the People's Choice Awards, MTV Movie Awards, etc. Really shitty, derivative movies can rake in a lot of money while legitimately great movies can be commercial flops.

Another big problem with the Oscars: the winners of the major categories are often telegraphed in advance by prior awards programs. The Producer's Guild often spoils who will win Best Picture. The DGA does the same with Best Director. The SAG often telegraphs the acting categories. More of the surprises happen farther down in the specialist/technical categories. And then some of those awards end up smelling like gimmies to the eventual Best Picture winner. Anyway, by the time the Oscars show is broadcast there is little reason to watch if you're wanting to be surprised.

Regarding falling ratings, those numbers have been dropping across the board. It has little to do with football players angering people or any other controversy. It has everything to do with cable/satellite TV costing too much money and prices continuing to rise at inflation rates well above average income growth. Combine that with the growth of alternative viewing platforms (like streaming). It's a perfect recipe for cord-cutting.

For the viewers still watching, the pace of the Oscars telecast does need to be sped up a lot. It shouldn't come at the expense of booting categories like Best Sound or Best Visual Effects off the broadcast. They need to limit the number of big musical numbers, video montages and other fluff. And, yeah, they need to cut down on the speech time. I don't think there's any away how politics is going to get eliminated from the acceptance speeches any movie or music awards show. That's been a part of it my entire life. The political leanings have stayed the same all these years too. I don't see that changing. If there's something on TV I'm not going to like I'm sure not going to watch it. For instance I don't watch any 24 hour cable news channel, they all sell half-truth and propaganda as a form of anger pornography.

One thing they could do is tape the broadcast and edit the results, showing only the highlights of speeches rather than us waiting minutes on end for a whole crowd of people to take the stage and talk. They already show edited highlights of other Oscar-related programs -like some of the other techie category stuff that gets demoted to an entirely different awards dinner. Is it really necessary for the show to be broadcast live?

What I'll probably do is just record the Oscars telecast on my DVR and then watch it later to fast-forward to the highlights and fast-forward past the other fluff. That is if I watch it at all. It's just as easy to watch something else and then monitor something like Twitter to catch results (if one cares about it).

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 09-13-2018 12:09 AM

quote: Bobby Henderson
What I'll probably do is just record the Oscars telecast on my DVR and then watch it later to fast-forward to the highlights and fast-forward past the other fluff.

I've been doing that ever since I had a VCR and later a DVR. I watch the whole show in about 45 minutes. I didn't watch last year's show at all because I didn't give a single shit about any of the nominations, except I was pulling for "Coco" in the animated category, and I saw that result on the Oscars website.

This year's show is looking to be a similar bore-fest, and probably controversial too, because the "popular" movie everyone thinks is an Oscar contender is "Black Panther," but it'll probably get shut out of the nominations (mostly since it's so old now, but also because it's not a "serious film"), and everyone will call the Academy a bunch of racists.

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Marcel Birgelen
Film God

Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 09-13-2018 04:28 PM

quote: Bobby Henderson
One thing they could do is tape the broadcast and edit the results, showing only the highlights of speeches rather than us waiting minutes on end for a whole crowd of people to take the stage and talk. They already show edited highlights of other Oscar-related programs -like some of the other techie category stuff that gets demoted to an entirely different awards dinner. Is it really necessary for the show to be broadcast live?

They could also just call all the nominees up to the stage beforehand and have them up, on the stage, when the winner is announced.

Cutting the speaking time will speed up the show, but will not make the show any more entertaining to watch. What should be cut is the constant thanking everybody and everything from the director's dog to the janitor.

So, either cut the speeches entirely or do something to spice them up, like introduce an award for the best acceptance speech and everybody using the cheap trick of politics will get penalty points. Maybe you could let the audience decide who had the best speech. [Wink]

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