This morning, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences announced several key changes to the Oscar broadcast moving forward. How will they affect the ceremony, and should this be cause for concern about the long-term health of the brand?
One of the first posts I ever made for this blog was a piece examining the Oscars ceremony and how it can be improved. Some of my ideas were a bit far-reaching, but for the most part, I felt justified in my notion that there are significant flaws in the current incarnation of the telecast, politics notwithstanding. So despite some of the overwhelming hate towards the Academy in the past few hours, I’m of the belief that a change was absolutely necessary to combat dwindling ratings. So let’s examine each of the changes and see if they are warranted or not.
From a letter addressed to members of the Academy from the Board of Directors:
- “We are committed to producing an entertaining show in three hours, delivering a more accessible Oscars for our viewers worldwide.”
This is a no-brainer in my opinion. I’m all for honoring everybody and letting all the winners say their piece on stage, and I also understand the need to break up the monotony with song-and-dance numbers or whatever, but anything over three hours is just too much. Even I, someone who cares about the awards and is deeply invested in all of the films, found myself bored to tears as last year’s telecast stretched towards the five hour mark. And if you’re reading this thinking, “oh, big shot armchair show director thinks he can just magically turn the show into 3 hours,” I get that they have to juggle a lot of moving pieces and try to fit everything they can into a condensed show. But I also outlined several steps in my last blog post that they can take to try to cut down on the fluff, some of which they actually seem to be implementing!
Which brings us to:
- “To honor all 24 award categories, we will present select categories live, in the Dolby Theatre, during commercial breaks (categories to be determined). The winning moments will then be edited and aired later in the broadcast.”
There’s been somewhat of an uproar about this, with people worried that the Academy is moving away from some of the technical categories (ie. Makeup & Hairstyling or Visual Effects) in order to make room for the “primary” categories. I don’t think this is the case. I’d like to instead point you in the direction of the Best Documentary Short and Best Animated Short categories for examples of awards that have no place in the live show. Not only does 99% of the television audience not know or care about these films, AND not only do less than 10% of the Academy even vote on these awards in the first place, but they have absolutely nothing to do with the main awards contenders of the night. Awards like Cinematography, Sound Design, and so on still tie in to the feature-length films being honored in the “above-the-line” categories, and thus have their place in the show.
As much as people are loathe to admit it, the Academy Awards are an opportunity to recognize specialized, technical industry professionals for their work, and some of the smaller categories simply don’t do that. It’s like the shorts categories are on an island by themselves…nobody in the room or on TV knows or cares who they are. Sure, honor them for their art and give them their deserved statues; no one’s taking that away. But they don’t need to eat up 5+ minutes of show time when that’s not why any of us are tuning in and they have nothing to do with the rest of the show. There is also an argument for trimming on a handful of technical categories as well. I argued in my original piece that the Sound Mixing and Sound Editing categories could be combined, for example. I guess we’ll have to wait for specifics on which categories are leaving the spotlight before we can pass ultimate judgment, but for now I say this is a wise move.
It’s also not like this move is without precedent. The Tony Awards do something similar with their smaller awards, giving them out in a pre-broadcast ceremony so as not to detract from the main show. The Academy itself even awards off-camera achievement awards, such as the Governors Awards and the Academy Scientific and Technical Awards. The telecast is a branding moment, designed to draw eyes to the Academy as a sort of fundraising event, and while that shouldn’t mean they have to pander to the lowest common denominator, it does mean they should take some practical steps to ensure that the show is always engaging the demographic they are advertising for.
Which transitions nicely into the most controversial part of the announcement:
- We will create a new category for outstanding achievement in popular film.
This has drawn even more ire from the public, as it reads as a bald-faced excuse to cram more blockbuster films into awards contention. I mentioned in my last article that the Academy should make an effort to reward some of the more popular films during the telecast, but creating a separate category just for them feels almost insulting. It’s especially disconcerting given the rise of Disney as a juggernaut in the film industry, and in recent months they have been pushing for more awards consideration with films like Black Panther leading the charge. I’m not about to claim collusion or anything like that, but it’s definitely a concern that the Academy is essentially creating a category designed for major studios to dump money into promotional campaigns.
There’s also the issue of what exactly this category entails. There isn’t even an official title for the award yet! How does one qualify? Is it solely based on box office numbers? Is there a fan vote? Who gets to vote on the category? Details are still to come, but if they’re still working out the kinks behind-the-scenes, I can only imagine they don’t exactly know the specifics themselves. I have a sinking suspicion that the finalists for this award will all be the hot Marvel/Star Wars/etc. properties of the minute, or a collection of sequels and reboots for established franchises that people recognize.
But I hope that the intent of the category is what actually transpires, and they actually plan to reward the five best films out of the upper echelons of money earners. It may be an arbitrary delineation, but they’ve made such arbitrary categories before, like Foreign Language Film and Animated Feature, which have gone over pretty well. It certainly doesn’t preclude those films from competing in the larger categories if it is warranted, and it’s happened in the past (2009’s Up, 2012’s Amour both received Best Picture noms). Once again, I’m willing to withhold judgment until we learn the specifics of how films are selected for the category. It looks sketchy, granted, but I believe the intentions are honest.
Finally, we have one more change that is being relatively glossed over:
- The date of the 92nd Oscars telecast will move to Sunday, February 9, 2020, from the previously announced February 23.
I actually love this change for a number of reasons. I’ve always believed that the Academy Awards were held too late into the following year, so most of the films being honored aren’t even in theaters anymore. This makes it far more tenable for people to follow the awards races and draw informed opinions on films when they’ve come out more recently. It will be a boon for theaters and studios as well, as they no longer have to do the whole awkward two-week re-release of nominated films that people are suddenly interested in. They can just continue showing them through January and early February instead of trying to stretch them through mid-March and losing money. It will also increase audience interest in the awards when the films are still fresh in their minds, when nowadays most people are wondering why they should care about films that aren’t even showing in theaters anymore. It all comes back to viewership!
This should also have a positive effect on awards season and the voting process. The Oscars are always held at the very tail-end of awards season, after shows like the BAFTAs and Golden Globes have ended, which runs the risk of influencing narratives for the major races. That’s always going to be an issue, of course, but a shorter time frame will mean it’s less of a factor than usual. Like if I’m an Academy voter and say “oh, this is a close decision between Actor X and Actor Y, but this guy’s swept the other shows so I should probably just vote for him”, that’s an issue. Awards voting is subjective, and people should of course be allowed to talk about their decisions and consider all options, but I feel that as of late it’s run like a political campaign, where momentum matters and other esoteric factors come into play that really shouldn’t for pure artistic recognition.
Conclusion
There are two ways of looking at these changes. There’s the cynical outlook, that the Academy Awards are slowly turning into the People’s Choice Awards. Then there’s the more cautiously optimistic view that I hold, which is that the Academy is slowly making changes to keep their brand alive. It’s no secret that the Oscars ratings have been sliding lately, and they are at risk of becoming irrelevant, so there’s pressure on them to both keep up appearances as a legitimate, prestigious institution and also draw enough public attention to stay in the spotlight. I’m glad they are making risky, middle-ground moves like this, rather than a much more cynical move like mandating that popular films get Best Picture noms or opening up all categories to popular vote. They are slowly pushing back against the argument that they are out of touch and insular to the outside world, while still maintaining the artistic value of their vote, and I think that’s commendable. With such limited information, there’s not much more to do except wait and hope that they make the right decisions, and despite popular sentiment against the Academy, I have faith that they’ll do the best thing for the spirit of celebrating film, because that’s what it’s all about in the end.
-Austin Daniel
Scriptophile 