Oscar Meltdown

[PGage]

There was some kind of catastrophic technical problem with the Oscar broadcast tonight. At least it was catastrophic for the streaming side of things where apparently most users on Disney or Hulu were unable to access the Oscar feed it all after the red carpet. For the ABC broadcast, it was less catastrophic, but it was still noticeable that there were some kind of technical problem. 

They repeatedly queued the orchestra too early. It was more than just the usual playing off the long acceptance speech thing that we’ve been seeing for 20 years or so, this was random and irrational. I suspect one of the biggest problems for ABC is going to be that they interrupted the acceptance speech for the K-pop songwriters halfway through; I have two K-pop fans in my family and what I know about them is they’re quick to anger, slow to forgive and have a very long memory. 

There were also at least two times when the camera went to Conan at the wrong time, once coming out of commercial near the end of the show, he was on camera that Orchestra had stopped playing, but apparently he had not gotten gotten the cue from the stage manager or whoever that he was live, and he was kind of talking to himself, repeating something like “we’re almost Done, We’re almost done” Until he finally seemed to get cued and started his spiel. 

There were several other glitches during the show. From what I’ve been able to tell the producers and the director are veterans of multiple live television broadcast in the past including the Oscars so it seems like this must’ve been some kind of electronic or computer problem that seem to be interfering with their communication or timing or synchronization or something. 

Another noticeable problem was they had planned it a very expanded and somewhat traumatic in memoriam section not just the usual death reel, but a special tribute to Rob Reiner  and his wife which ended with a long line of actors who had appeared in Reiner films on stage and they clearly were trying to get some close-ups for dramatic impact, but every shot they tried to deliver was blocked because, not surprisingly, everybody had stood up in respect, and the cameras they were using were all apparently at floor level and so all the camera shots were blocked by heads.  You could almost hear them going “ Camera 1, Oh, that one’s Blocked”, “ Camera two, Oh, that one’s blocked also”, “Camera three - shit, that’s blocked too.” 

Maybe related or not the sound in the auditorium sounded kind of muted and the whole show was surprisingly low energy. Perhaps part of that was due to the feelings in the room about the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife and the well publicize connection at Conan had with those events tonight before the murder. I don’t know. Maybe people were nervous they have been reports over the weekend of threats by Iran against California, which Conan kind of joked about in his monologue. 

Anyway, I would say this was the most technically flawed Oscar broadcast in my lifetime, which is pretty long time now.

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[Kevin M. (RPCV)]

Just for giggles, I reviewed the IMDb page for this year’s broadcast. The same director and exec producers for the last several years. Same venue, too. Not sure why the camera positions would be obscured by standing audience members. 

I was kind of shocked to see a few familiar names from the years I spent on the award show circuit. That was a quarter of a century ago and they are still doing it. I hope they are in therapy.

Is it me, or is live-event streaming still problematic in general? I know of people who struggled to watch the SuperBowl again this year.