NEW YORK, Feb. 23 (BUS): To counteract ratings plummeting, the Academy Awards are undergoing a drastic cut, with eight awards to be presented live during next month’s telecast of the 94th Academy Awards.
In a letter sent Tuesday to members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the group’s president, David Rubin, said awards for film editing, production design, sound, makeup, hairstyling, music (original score) and the three short film awards (documentary, live action and animation) will be presented. Animated) at the ceremony before it went live on March 27 on ABC, AP reports.
Now, instead of starting the concert and the broadcast all at once, the Dolby Theater party will start an hour before the TV broadcast. Presentations and speeches by these top eight winners will be edited during the three-hour live broadcast, which Robin assured will still provide each winner with an “Oscar moment.”
Robin said the changes are essential to the health of the Oscars in the future.
“When deciding how to produce the Oscars, we recognize that it is live television and we must prioritize the television audience to increase viewer engagement and maintain the program’s liveliness, movement and relevance,” Robin wrote. This has been an important focus of discussion for some time. We do this while also remembering the importance of our candidates enjoying a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
The possibility of some of the 23 Academy Awards categories being withdrawn from broadcasts has long been a matter of debate. In 2019, the Academy initially sought to broadcast four categories — cinematography, montage, makeup, hairstyling, and short live action — in a short, recorded clip. But after the backlash that followed, the Academy reversed itself days before the show.
But ratings continued to fall. Last year’s broadcast, which was heavily modified by COVID-19, fell to an all-time low of 9.85 million viewers. (In 2018, 29.6 million people watched.) Pressure mounted not only with the Oscars’ longtime broadcast partner, ABC, but within the academy to create a cultural institution that has long resisted change.
This year, after several Oscars without hosts, producers are turning to the trio of Amy Schumer, Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes to take over. The show, which was produced by Will Packer, will also get to know the favorite movie as voted by fans on Twitter.
In remaking the Academy Awards to be less of a march through awards, the Academy Awards will become more like the Tonys and Grammys, which have similarly curtailed the number of awards handed out during telecasts. But that didn’t stop the ratings dropping for either of them. Both the Tonys and the Grammys hit new viewing lows in 2021.
Some have argued that no reform can turn the tide against any network television broadcasts in a more pervasive and streaming media world.
Robin vowed that the revamped broadcast would be “tighter and more robust” due to the category changes, but he also promised that not one eyebrow-raising mod would return from last year’s ceremony: The show would once again end up with Best Picture.