Oscar Anxiety: April 25

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PGage

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Apr 18, 2021, 10:41:01 AM4/18/21
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My wife and I have participated in an Oscar Pool with a group of friends for more than 15 years. The winner gets a $25 gift card and (most coveted) a printed certificate proclaiming them the King/Queen of the Oscars, suitable for taping on an office door (Modesty prevents me from reporting how often I have won, and how many photos I have of the certificate on my door; it’s not as often as I would like it to be, but enough to be tied fir most in the group).

The point is, this group of film and Oscar fetishists, is not having the Pool this year. And we didn’t even get together to talk about it. Just nobody seems to have even thought about it.

The Academy, and ABC, is terrified that pattern is being repeated at various levels through the country.

The Grammys and Golden Globes saw ratings fall 53% and 60%. Oscar ratings fell about as much (44%) from 2014 through 2020. 23.6 million people watched Parasite win Best Picture last year. 

So, the guessing game is, will Oscar ratings drop as much as the other award shows, and will that set a new normal?

My prediction is that ratings will be down at levels close to the others, but somewhat less, both because it’s the Oscars, and things are starting to open up.  I am going with -37%, or about 14.8 Million viewers. I suspect the Academy and ABC would be happy with that rather optimistic prediction; the linked LAT story contemplates viewers in the single digit millions.

Oscar ratings are influenced by the popularity of the films in leading contention, and by default this year none of the films are blockbusters or have much buzz. I try to watch all films and performances nominated in major categories before the show each year, but many millions of Americans use the Oscars the way I use the Grammys, to see if there is anything in the new crop of offerings that year worth checking out. All of this years nominees can be seen online, but that hardly makes them feel special, and makes the Oscars more like an article on “What’s good on Netflix?” (Or whatever). So I think one major variable determining ratings will be what percent of the American movie-going public expects to be going to the movies anytime soon.


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M-D November

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Apr 19, 2021, 11:55:06 PM4/19/21
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I've been working my way through the Best Picture nominees, and I have to say, while it's nice to see some films that wouldn't have otherwise seen the light of day get a break, I have yet to be blown away by any of the nominees.  ("Minari" came closest, although the final act left me a little flat.). Fortunately for ABC, the acting categories feature some promotable (within the demo) star power, but among the Best Picture crowd, the biggest names are John Hurt, Anthony Hopkins and Frances McDormand (who...if you've never seen her poop in a bucket, get ready for a treat when you watch "Nomadland".)

PGage

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Apr 25, 2021, 9:30:16 AM4/25/21
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I’m a little surprised by that. Hard to calibrate “Blown Away”, but I have really enjoyed all of the BP nominees this year, and have not seen one I think doesn’t deserve to be in the category, which every year it seems there are at least several like that.

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PGage

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Apr 26, 2021, 5:06:23 PM4/26/21
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Looks like the LAT was right (and my optimistic prediction wrong) - Oscar ratings down 58%, in the single digits (9.85M vs 23.6M last year). This worse that the Grammys, but (slightly) better than the Golden Globes.

If next year ratings return to their pre COVID declining trend, we would expect them to rebound to around 20M, or twice  last night. That does seem optimistic, as it is hard to turn back the clock on viewing habits.



On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 at 7:40 AM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:

The Grammys and Golden Globes saw ratings fall 53% and 60%. Oscar ratings fell about as much (44%) from 2014 through 2020. 23.6 million people watched Parasite win Best Picture last year. 

So, the guessing game is, will Oscar ratings drop as much as the other award shows, and will that set a new normal?

My prediction is that ratings will be down at levels close to the others, but somewhat less, both because it’s the Oscars, and things are starting to open up.  I am going with -37%, or about 14.8 Million viewers. I suspect the Academy and ABC would be happy with that rather optimistic prediction; the linked LAT story contemplates viewers in the single digit millions.



Kevin M.

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Apr 26, 2021, 5:45:45 PM4/26/21
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I hesitate to make light of Covid, but it would certainly be an upside to the pandemic if one of the end results was an end to televised award ceremonies. 

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PGage

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Apr 26, 2021, 6:31:28 PM4/26/21
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That seems unlikely, at least re Oscars, which even with a 58% drop in ratings would be the highest rated show on most any day of a regular week.

What will almost certainly change, for Oscar and other main Awards shows, is the magnitude of the revenue stream they provide. If the Academy one year soon has a 30%-40% reduction in its income, that may change a lot of things.

As someone who likes the Oscars (not other award shows so much), what would please me is if the drop in revenue deflated much of the bloated production values of the usual ceremony, and brought it back to what it really always has been, and was to a large extent last night.

Kevin M.

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Apr 26, 2021, 6:41:24 PM4/26/21
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I can only liken it to the decline of beauty pageants; what once were the talk of the water-cooler, big rated, hyped, and dirt cheap to produce, pop culture has reduced them to the nothings they deserve to be. Eventually, the constant stream of bad press and public criticism is going to force the networks to end the practice of televising the reading of names followed by the patting on the backs of those names. There’s no merit to it, and it only feeds the very ego-driven machine that both the right and the left are sick of.

Banish them to cable, of better still create an all awards show streaming app so we can genuinely see how many (or how few) care enough to fork over money to watch them.

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David Bruggeman

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Apr 26, 2021, 7:29:55 PM4/26/21
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While they may not have the $$$ to compare with the networks, this seems like something E! would love to take on.

David

Adam Bowie

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Apr 26, 2021, 7:50:06 PM4/26/21
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I'm not the biggest fan of awards' ceremonies in general but my main thoughts about this year's ceremony - which I watched bits of earlier today, with a fair amount of fast-forwarding because it's three hours...

1. Ratings of this year's awards must for the most part reflect the films - or lack of recognisable films - that were released and thus nominated. Anything with any significant audience expectations, even awards fare, got delayed (e.g. In the Heights). You wouldn't expect an awards ceremony for essentially independent films to do that well, and it didn't.

2. I don't think you can blame anything on the format. Sure, it was low key and different, but I suspect that relatively few viewers turned on, and then turned off again in disgust a little later. If ratings were down catastrophically, then people just didn't tune in at all. See point 1.

3. That all said, the film industry has changed, and tentpole films are rarely the "best" films on any kind of reasonable criteria. The kinds of stories that used to win Oscars are now more likely to be found on television. (Much as I actually really liked Promising Young Woman, the BBC/HBO I May Destroy You, was much better treating similar themes). That horse has well and truly bolted new, and I can't see how things will change allowing the Academy to award "good" and "popular" films at the same time, beyond a handful.

Who knows where this leave the Oscars going forward, but the real question probably needs to be where things leave cinema itself in the future. It's far too soon to really know how many actual theatres will survive, and like our working practices in the future, our film-viewing is likely to change. I love going to a big loud spectacular film and watching it with hundreds of others. But clicking a few buttons on my TV's remote is also good. Although the latter does require self-discipline to keep off my phone/tablet/laptop.


Adam

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PGage

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Apr 28, 2021, 10:25:46 AM4/28/21
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As Steve posted in the other Oscar thread, and to keep this one complete for the record, ratings were revised upward, to 10.4M. This makes the decline from last year 56% by my calculation, improved from 58%, though Deadline does not seem to have updated that bit. This moves the Oscars closer to the Grammys in terms of COVID decline, and away from the Golden Globes.

More symbolically it keeps the ratings in double digit millions, which Deadline and a few other publications trivialized  when they reported the revision, but made a big deal of when they reported the original single digit.


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