Sunday night’s Oscars improved from last year’s historically low ratings, but slumped in civility and grace.
Strike another death knell on the once almighty rating grabber.
Tinseltown likes to see itself as the center of the moral and pop culture universe, but come on — that was ridiculous, another slap in the face for what’s supposed to be (but is rare) “Hollywood’s brightest moment” with television for riding a gravy train , who went off the rails and crashed into a wall of indifference.
Sunday night’s Oscars show on ABC is the second-lowest Oscars show ever, with around 15 million viewers, up from a miserable 10.4 million viewers last year (similar to an episode of “Yellowstone” on cable TV’s Paramount Network).
The mediocre slump in ratings will give nervous network execs hope that this dinosaur can be saved from extinction – rather than the obvious writing on the (video) wall that it’s too late for that.
This year’s self-congratulations celebrations were produced by Will Packer, who has another Will (Smith) to thank for perhaps the most controversial moment in the ceremony’s 93-year history … if only someone watched it live on ABC instead of scampering to his computer at the late Sunday night/Monday morning to see what all the social media fuss was about.
Despite Will Smith’s shocking TKO, Sunday night’s Oscarcast on ABC is the second-lowest-rated Oscar of all time. AFP via Getty Images
There is no doubt that Smith’s WTF? Oscar presenter Chris Rock’s open palm, after Rock joked about Jada Pinkett Smith’s alopecia (“Jada, can’t wait for ‘GI Jane 2′”) is parsed under a sociological microscope and analyzed – accompanied by the requisite hand-wringing – to the Oscars next year.
There’s a chance Smith could be fined by the FCC for his tirade of profanity launched in Rock once he sat back down. It was paged out by ABC but heard elsewhere in the world so that’s another kindling to throw in the firestorm. Smith is unlikely to be fined – even less likely to be forced to lose his Oscar from the Academy, as has been speculated – but still. It’s a speaker. But speakers, spontaneous as they may be, will not reverse this ship’s traditional television course. It has sailed and needs to dock at another platform.
If those in power in a business built on entertainment had the guts to shout out loud, they would move the 2023 Oscars to an online-only home in a digital reality aired with television already watched by too many Even jaded congratulatory awards ceremonies disappear a little more every season. Believe me, there will be more people watching online than sitting in front of their TVs. It’s a sign of the times.
The moment stunned viewers who later watched. Getty Images
And while you’re at it, cut an hour or two out of the three or more hours you spend watching the paint dry. The superficial glitz and glamor of Tinseltown’s Biggest Night only goes so far once you’re past the “Who are you wearing?” question. Red carpet moments, and that’s only from a fashion point of view, if you even care, and it’s in the pre-show – another unnecessary, underappreciated time waster.
It all vanishes once the tedious TV show begins and you realize that amidst all the pre-hype that “everything will be different this year,” you’ve been sold a merchandise ticket. They won’t. I think we know that by now. Will fan favorite Billy bring Crystal back? It won’t matter in the long run.
That’s not to say the Oscar producers haven’t tried to change it for a television show that once captivated over 40 million viewers in those salad days when it finished only behind the Super Bowl in television’s annual ratings list.
This year there were three hosts: Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes and Regina Hall. Eight awards were removed from the live show to add momentum. No “innovation” has done the trick to stop the work. Sunday night’s Oscarcast was the longest in four years as it went almost 40 minutes into overtime. Didn’t anyone get the memo?
And then there were the aesthetic insults. Did we really have to see Amy Schumer as Spider-Man – a great moment for Disney, ABC’s parent company, which also owns Marvel Entertainment? And when you get Beyoncé to perform, show her live, not pre-taped opposite her performance of “Be Alive.” Samuel L. Jackson won an honorary Oscar … but had to watch awkwardly as his Pulp Fiction co-stars Uma Thurman and John Travolta recreate their iconic dance from the film because his acceptance speech was cut along with other honorees from the television show Liv Ullmann, Danny Glover and Elaine May. Big mistake. Come on folks, get a hint.
It’s time to change how and where we watch the Oscars.