That’s what Nikki Finke is reporting tonight (in the midst of further outlandish bitching about AMPAS executive director Bruce Davis), just hours after a new producer and director were tapped for the ceremony. And it’s obviously a major decision with a lot of moving parts, but let’s consider this.
First and foremost, it’s the drum I’ve been banging since the Academy began to get scared about ratings. Quick fix ideas like adding an animated feature film category nine years ago and, of course, beefing up the Best Picture category to 10 nominees have been attempts at opening the door for popular or blockbuster fare. The thinking has been, if popular films are nominated, more people will watch the show.
But that logic has always been flawed at best, a leap of faith that doesn’t address the real reason audiences don’t seem interested in tuning in every March: awards show fatigue.
Not to belabor a point, but again, by the time the Oscars roll around every year, they’ve already been preempted by the Golden Globes, the ever-expanding Critics’ Choice Movie Awards and the Screen Actors Guild Awards, three nationally televised, red carpeted kudofests. The Oscars feel stale, like an afterthought, when they should feel like the gold standard. The only real answer has always been to get a jump on the stiff competition that has developed in the last decade or so. Hey, Meryl Streep gets it!
Of course, this is where we get into all that machinery. A year in cinema has come to reflect a certain paradigm, with no man’s lands for dumped off product, counter-programming considerations in the summer and, of course, prestige, potential awards product at the end of the season. But while it has become frustrating that the year is so backloaded in that fashion, it has also made a lot of sense if the industry is meant to have an informed vote. March is barely enough time to get through all of the films as far as voters working in the industry are concerned. You can argue that it’s plenty of time all you want, but you would show an ignorance to the realities of production life in the process.
A move such as this would obviously force the studios’ hand. The calendar would have to take on a whole different philosophy. Prestige films would have to be more carefully scattered throughout the year, perhaps finding some room in the mid-to-late summer. Latter year film festivals in Telluride, Venice and Toronto would no longer instigate awards buzz so much as validate (or invalidate) it, to say nothing of Santa Barbara, which hits in late January and is a key stop for Oscar hopefuls the week after nominations are announced.
Then there’s the issue of studio awards budgets, which are pretty much in place and, if the decision is made to do this for the upcoming telecast, they’d have to be firmed up even quicker, strategies put together fast. Any Oscar consultants currently on vacation? You might want to hop on the next flight out (if it were to go through, of course).
Make no mistake, the whole scheme of things would change shape. But the bottom line is: the Oscars would get the eyeballs, before they’re tired and watery and irritated by the parade of awards shows scattered throughout the fall and early winter. If you want a spike in ratings, my humble opinion is, this is how you do it. Enough piecemeal fixes. If it’s time for change, it’s time for CHANGE.
Tell us what you think in the comments section below. And now is as good a time as any to launch a new poll, so tell us what you think of this possibility in the right sidebar.
Comments
58 responses to “AMPAS brass debating moving Oscars to January?”
I can see SAG, Globe, and Critics Choice executives shaking in their boots. Those are important pitstops along the Oscar race, and if they perceive this as losing their appeal as important precursors, would they have the gall to hold their awards shows in, say, December, announcing nominations in November?
One potential problem I could see is definitely the possibility of not having enough time to mull over the choices. If the Oscars had been the week after Avatar was released, it would have won in a heartbeat.
I’d love to see how that plays with film schedules – spread the love and put some of your studio’s good in the first half of the year :-)
If the Oscars moved up, then all the other ones would too, even if it were as early as this year. Then we’d be back to ground zero.
There is no solution for this short of the studios boycotting the GGs, which they help prop up. That’s the way to solve the problem.
It would be one of the best things to happen to the industry in a long time. I’m tied of having to rush around every December to see everything I want to see. Spread the quality out. And, yeah, the Oscars should be first and foremost. It sure would make Oscar parties and sites like this more fun if the winners weren’t so obviously preordained come the big night. And, yeah, ratings would go way up.
If the Oscars moved to Jan 7th or something like that, how could the globes move any earlier? Have the show on New Year’s Day? Ain’t gonna happen. At any rate, the Globes have been around for years and, i believe, they’ve always appeared before the Oscars. It;s all those OTHER things…Screen Actors, Critic’s Choice, etc, and the length of time leading up to the Oscars–that exhausts the excitement and the ratings for the Oscars. (I wouldn’t mind a globe boycott, though; to me, they’ve always been a joke organization.)
A lot of these precursors also desperately try to predict the Oscars with their own awards (I find the amount of overlap between SAG and Oscar nominees shocking). With that kind of pressure off, perhaps they’ll try to award who they truly think is best?
I love this idea. I just wish they would get rid of ten best picture nominees. Screw TDK it isn’t the watershed its fans make it out to be.
Some smaller indies and late releases have trouble grabbing enough viewers in time for the nominations in the current schedule, and I worry that moving it up earlier will just lead to more auto-pilot voting.
Besides, I suspect the Guilds and Globes would all start moving up even earlier to counter the academy move, so while I think they could perhaps move the broadcast up a week or two (and cut down on the post-nomination period as that always seems too long before the actual awards) January is too early IMO.
I really don’t see how the other awards shows could move up all that much, if at all. A lot of times, the HFPA are the first to see films as it is, and many of those films are fresh off the Avid at that point. It just wouldn’t work, none of the organizations would see anything. They’d be stuck where they are and finally won’t be leeching on the big Oscar build-up. AMPAS would finally have the centerpiece show.
So what if this leads to more films like Nine or Invictus getting in? Being so close to nomination time arguably helped a film like Ben Button, which by the time it was released had racked up so many nods that it could not be denied a BP nod (and, frick, the second highest number of nods ever) despite its lukewarm reception.
On one hand this is good because, yes, it is tiring going through to March and there are so many tiny films that get those ridiculous “NY and/or LA only” releases at the end of December so maybe this will mean distribs actually give them better dates.
But, yeah, how are Academy members (as in the ones still working on movies or who are out there on the marketing trail) going to find time to see them all? Hmmm.
This’ll be interesting.
I’m interested in how places such as InContention will deal with it? Will the FYC stuff start a couple of months earlier or are these places going to be out of two months worth of revenue?
“They’d be stuck where they are and finally won’t be leeching on the big Oscar build-up. AMPAS would finally have the centerpiece show.”
If being FIRST! is all it takes to be ‘the centerpiece’ then why don’t we all worship at the altar of the National Board of Review?
None of the other awards will ever be anything but foreplay. They’re warm-up acts; pregame shows. The Academy Awards are the culmination. Oscar Night is the ultimate thrilling climax.
You’re apparently a bigger fan of premature ejaculation than I am, Kris.
It’s the length of the Oscar season that is the main problem.
The Academy Award will always be the most prestigious, first or last.
Ryan: I don’t see how you can argue that the general audience doesn’t view the Oscars as an afterthought to everything else that comes before, everything that hammers the season into a mode of predictability. You’re crossing you wires thinking that first in this instance is about being authoritative. It’s merely about being fresh, and right now, by the time March rolls around, awards shows feel stale to the vast majority. Awards nuts like you me and the rest might think it’s a wonderful cap to the year, but we’re hardly representative of the viewership AMPAS needs.
The Oscars got 41m viewers against the Golden Globes’ 16m viewers.
“It’s merely about being fresh, and right now, by the time March rolls around, awards shows feel stale to the vast majority. Awards nuts like you me and the rest might think it’s a wonderful cap to the year, but we’re hardly representative of the viewership AMPAS needs.”
Not only will I be happy to argue that the Oscars are not an afterthought to the vast majority, I’m willing to bet that outside of the hermetic bubble in which you, me, and hard-core awards junkies exist, the nationwide audience AMPAS needs doesn’t care about or even know about all the other diddly precursors a select few of us obsess about.
So here me out. Many of the people who watch the oscars, and the whole circuit in general, see it as one big playoffs. So, why not treat it in that way as much as possible. You put the Globes in the first week of january, the sag awards a week later, and oscar 2 weeks after. It would be on the Sunday in between the NFC/AFC championship and super bowl, and if AMPAS, HFPA, and SAG just came to a gentleman’s agreement, that would make them the only real heavhweights in town (when it comes to awards shows, not ruling out DGA, PGA, etc.)
and I realize I wrote here and not hear
Ryan: I think it’s on the morning news enough to be in the consciousness. It’s not anything they’d obsessively follow, but it’s enough for the Oscars to be a “didn’t we already do this?” moment.
In my opinion the Academy should have the same awads criterias as the Independent Spirit Awars: a selected comittee of 20-30 people that see all the films in contention and choose the nominees, and with only all the members voting for the winners. That way the Globes, Sags, etc won’t have any impact in the final nominations.
Or maybe the Academy can adapt the voting process of foreign film for the other categories, with the members of the Academy voting only 3 nominees and a selected comittee voting the other 2 other nominees.
That’s the only way of seeing foreing performances in the Oscars.
My thoughts:
I enjoy the Top 10 idea. The race is usually down to only 2 or 3 movies, anyway. And every year (with 5) some of my faves never quite made the 5 – which enraged me.
I also think that Globes should either move to mid December or stay in early January. If the Oscars are in January, make ’em late January. And move the BFC Awards and SAG to February.
Those of us who love movies and award shows will still likely tune-in to BFCA and SAG anyway (difference in Oscar decisions, red carpet); kinda like when BAFTA’s were after the Oscars.
This also makes prestige films come out just a little but sooner (beginning of August, maybe?) – spread em out.
And the only slight concern I have is piracy. But if you keep the 2 big ones (GG and Oscars) as the 2 prime events, and only 3-4 weeks apart, then the piracy thing shouldn’t be too bad.
As for the Nines and Invictus’ getting in with a shortened season: hahaha, well, I mildly enjoyed both of those movies. BUT, on the whole, it would be a concern of mine, as well. But again, if there’s 10, I’m sure 5-7 rightful films, if not more, would make the 10, anyway.
Maybe early February instead of January? Certainly, early March this year was absurd and too long, and last year’s late February was only slightly better. However, if the Critics Choice Award can take place on January 15, why not the Oscars?
I would think it great if there was some sort of Novemeber cut-off, not for general release but rather submission to the Academy. If you think about it, it would ensure that most prestige fare was in theaters when nominations were announced, and most likely still on the day of the big show. It isn’t like these films are rushing to be completed; most have been playing at film festivals for some time.
I like the Oscars being pushed up. The sooner the better, right?
I just don’t get why they have to drmatically alter something in order to get ratings. Last year it switched to 10 nominees, and now they are doing this.
I always felt that the Oscars are the Oscars, no matter what the ratings. Big, overblown and always welcome in my living room.
i’d love to see the films get spread out over through out the years that way you can void the argument released to soon plus most people don’t watch because they know that the films they like don’t win even if there nominated instead they go to some other film most regular people never even heard of
“If the Oscars had been the week after Avatar was released, it would have won in a heartbeat.”
The very thought horrifies me.
I wouldn’t mind at all if the Globes and Critics choice stopped, they are just pathetic attempts at predictions or tasteless star-fucking.
There can be no Globes or Critics Choice awards after the Oscars. If I have won the Oscar, believe me I wouldn’t to attend these. They have value only in being predictors of Oscars, otherwise they are worthless. Imagine even the Baftas, once a vibrant institution with many glorious choices(including MANY foreign language titles) had to eventually be folded into the Oscar season to be properly attended.
James D: Thats a brilliant and very sane idea. A Nov 31st deadline seems perfect, so the academy can have the nominations submission deadline by 18th Nov. The nominations can be announced on 22nd giving the studios time to make and ship screeners to the members just in time for the vacation. The final voting deadline can be 13th Jan and the Oscars held on 15th Jan.
This is obviously a good idea but the problem which has been stated is whether or not the voters would see the movies in time. Contenders would obviously have to move their release date up a little earlier.
AMPAS shouldn’t consider any other awards ceremony when making its decision. HFPA and BFCA will fall in line: they can’t exist as anything but precursors to the big show.
The only problem is giving voters enough time to see the films. And the only solution to this that I can think of is pushing up the cut-off date–which would then redefine the Oscars as something other than the best of a given calendar year. They could pretend the month of December doesn’t exist (ie – any film that opens in December is automatically ineligible for Oscar consideration), but that would further limit the definition of what an Oscar contender is.
What if eligibility were based on screening availability to AMPAS members? That way, a film could still open on December 31, but as long as it was made available to AMPAS members by some set date before then, it would still be up for Oscar consideration. If studios are worried about piracy, they should keep better tabs on their screener DVDs, or use better technology to prevent ripping and burner (it does exist!).
I convinced myself. Nominations should be announced January 1st. Ceremony 2 weeks later. Do your worst, Oscar.
This idea has always been advo0cated by people who have access to screeners and screenings. For the rest of us peons, it would mean having to cram a dozen or more movies into a 3-4 week period — not my idea of fun. Every year, there are films I’ve barely caught up with by Oscar night. You cut a month off my schedule, and you’re turning me into one of those people who watch only having seen half the nominees. Thanks a bunch.
And, I’m sorry, singling out the Globes as the ones who have to be flogged is myopic. The Globes have been around 65+ years and never created awards fatigue. It’s SAG and, especially lately, the BFCA who’ve created the tedium — particularly the latter, which first slavishly attempts to “predict” the Oscars, and last year turned its presentations into a virtual Oscars, complete with song-and-dance routines. Expecting that group to fade into the woodwork is fantasy — they’ll just move up their deadlines and try to exert the same dreary influence a few weeks earlier.
I of course meant 18the Dec, so my plan would read like, “A Nov 31st deadline seems perfect, so the academy can have the nominations submission deadline by 18th Dec. The nominations can be announced on 22nd giving the studios time to make and ship screeners to the members just in time for the vacation. The final voting deadline can be 13th Jan and the Oscars held on 15th Jan.”
Yeah, all movies from 1st Jan to 31st Nov qualify. Movies from 1st Dec t0 31st Dec must also submit their papers by 31st Nov if they wanna qualify and show the movie to the academy before the nom deadline date of 18 Dec to enable them to vote for it if they want.
“It’s not anything they’d obsessively follow, but it’s enough for the Oscars to be a ‘didn’t we already do this?’ ”
That’s an interesting way to characterize the intelligence of millions of people across the country, Kris. On the one hand you say their brains are spongy enough to soak up dozens of vague clues that there’s a whole ‘nother world of awards ritual out there. On the other hand they’re too stoopid to distinguish between anything they hear and it all runs together in their heads like redundant gibberish.
I’m saying there are millions of people who are well-aware of the machinery of the awards circuit but don’t give a damn about the BFCA or NBR because those are not the name brands they buy. There are millions of other who I guarantee you would not be able to tell you what the initials HFPA or DGA even stand for, but have watched the Oscars all their lives.
There are people who know about the precursors and simply don’t care. There are others — shock! — who don’t watch the morning news and completely tune out anything they’re not interested in.
Then there are several thousand of us who think we know all there is to know about the movies. You seem to be saying that the Academy needs the 100,000 hard-core awards junkies to stay afloat. But in fact, we’re a teeny tiny fraction of the Oscar audience.
If the 4o or 50 million people who tune in religiously to watch the Oscars gave a damn about the BAFTAs or AFI awards, movie blogs would be quite a bit busier. Even if there were 250,000 people who got excited about precursors, don’t you think we’d have more than the same few dozen regulars commenting on our little speculative posts all the time?
I like it. Especially the adjustment of the film release schedules. I like that a lot.
Tom: I don’t think the Academy is, nor should they be, concerned with whether die hard “peons” see the films in time.
And I’m not singling out the GGs, they are just part and parcel of the point that awards fatigue is, clearly, the reason why ratings have dwindled. The SAG awards started 15, 16 years ago. The BFCA not long after. So combined with the already rolling GGs, it’s a lot.
Ryan: I don’t think any of that properly addresses my point. People are aware of nationally televised awards shows, whether they know what the initials HFPA and DGA stand for or not. Then your fourth graph kind of makes my point so I don’t really follow your argument at all. I don’t think the hard core audience is what AMPAS needs, I think the numbers that reach way beyond our tiny tribe are what they need, and in my opinion, the masses feel like the Oscars are an afterthought once they’ve seen a similar show three times. Why is that so hard to understand?
The worst part about the Oscars being so late is that they have been so predictable the last few years. Everyone gets like 18 or 19 correct out of 24.
Let’s movie it up so that it is harder to become a “lock” and not everyone and their grandma knows Sandra Bullock is going to win two months before the show even airs.
A long awards season may test our patience sometimes, but I don’t mind that so much. In fact, I like it. I need time to catch up with all the nominated films, and I need time to let them linger in my mind. Moving the Oscars to January would make that month way too hectic for my liking.
“Tom: I don’t think the Academy is, nor should they be, concerned with whether die hard “peons” see the films in time.”
Wow — spoken as one who’ll never be put in that position. I’ve only been following the Oscars since the 60s; screw me.
There are two large reasons why the Oscars have dwindled in audience appeal (three if you count the sheer fragmentation of media/TV ratings over the decades): the infantilzation of Hollywood product, which has led to an ever-widening gap between what any serious artist would consider worthy movies and what mass audiences turn out to see; and the very existence of the “precursor groups”, who see it as their mission to influence/predict the Oscars. Moving up the date will do nothing to ameliorate either situation (as I’ll bet the house SAG and BFCA just move up accordingly, as they did when the March to February move was made). Meantime, those of us who don’t/can’t go to four movies a week in December/January or have access to screeners, will be deprived of a longtime pleasure. A brilliant plan.
Also, regarding your argument that they would not get to films in time, can it safely be said that they don’t get to enough as it is? An earlier deadline would take them out of that narrow view where they only see a certain number of “legitimate” contenders.
Another also, I am not a fan of the beating up of the Golden Globes. Yes, they are more star-hungry than others, but their foreign film category is consistently better than the Oscars every year. No Departures nonsense, or 4 Months snubbing, for them.
“…the masses feel like the Oscars are an afterthought once they’ve seen a similar show three times. Why is that so hard to understand?”
It’s hard to understand and impossible to accept because they HAVE NOT seen the other show three times.
(3 times? Again, you seem the be simultaneously overestimating the American appetite for minor awards, at the same time you claim they can’t remember what they saw.)
As adam smartly points out in comment 15, the Oscars had an audience of 41 million. The Golden Globes 16 million.
How many people in the USA do you think tuned in to BBC America to watch the BAFTAs?
Just because you told all your friends and family to TiVo the Critics Choice Awards, Kris, doesn’t mean anybody else in the country watched or cared about them.
So the Oscars move to January 15th, what’s stopping the Critics Choice Awards from broadcasting the 3 days sooner? Talk about mashing everything together into a meaningless cluttered hash.
By the way, I also love how you instruct Tom to get real and face up to the fact that the Academy doesn’t care if the ‘peons’ across America even see the movies nominated. But at the same time, you encourage AMPAS to try any sort of clumsy acrobatics to get those clueless “eyes” to tune into their broadcast ceremony.
I really don’t grasp your theory, Kris. So say 6 million people eagerly tune in to watch the Critics Choice Awards (just a guess, probably a generous guess).
And those same 6 million avid awards followers on Oscar night will shrug and say, “Naw, we already done seen Meryl and Sandie kiss. Let’s switch over an’ watch Ice Road Truckers instead of them damn redundant Oscars.”
Two kinds of people watch the Oscars. The people who watch EVERY other awards show like crack addicts. And the people who don’t watch ANY other awards show except the Oscars.
Tom: I was in that position many years before I did this. You assume way too much.
Ryan: You’re aiming to be glib at this point. One doesn’t have to watch the SAG, GGs and CCMAs front to back. It’s in the pop culture consciousness enough. TNT, NBC and VH1 aren’t exactly boutique channels that no one comes across in their flipping, and again, news coverage tends to dedicate a modicum of time to the winners.
“Just because you told all your friends and family to TiVo the Critics Choice Awards, Kris, doesn’t mean anybody else in the country watched or cared about them.”
What the fuck is the point of that comment?
Also, regarding Tom’s comment, you’re (as usual) stretching to make me look like some kind of double-talking moron, but I was addressing his apparent feeling that the Oscars should be concerned with whether the TV audience SEES the films in question. That shouldn’t be a part of their strategy necessarily, IMO, but coming off as fresh as possible rather than bringing up the rear of the season should.
And it’s not “my” theory. I’m certainly not the first to put it out there, I won’t be the last. And I think this:
“Two kinds of people watch the Oscars. The people who watch EVERY other awards show like crack addicts. And the people who don’t watch ANY other awards show except the Oscars.”
…is a reach at best with no real foundation.
By the way, any time you’d like to adopt a less combative and smart-assy approach to this discussion, that’d be nice. I’m certainly not going over to Awards Daily and flogging your post with overly confrontational commentary.
By the way, the issue of “how many more viewers do you need” is worth addressing. Like you say, the ratings are already up there, top tier with things like the Super Bowl. For whatever reason, advertising probably, AMPAS isn’t satisfied with what they’ve been getting. So in my humble opinion, the only course left to take is preemption (not to sound weirdly militaristic). While people may not be glued to the earlier awards shows, they do collectively make the season feel tired once late February rolls around. How could they not?
Absolutely I’ve seen and heard of awards fatigue from coworkers for years. Granted I work in publishing and in New York City but time and again people who sort of pay attention to movies will comment on why do the same people keep winning the same awards over and over and over again all spring and that the Oscars are so predictable now. We even stopped our Oscar pool because people thought it was getting more and more predictable based on all the other award shows preceeding it. I truly believe Ryan is talking from a rarefied perspective without taking into account that there is a vast number of “peons” who are interested enough in movies to care about the “big” winners but who sort of think the Oscars are the “big” awards but then find the whole thing exhausting and overdone. The Oscars should be first and the biggest of the year. And I do sort of like the thought that then other award organizations might actually use their own, unique perspectives t0 select their winners. Wouldn’t that be cool? Certainly more likely than all the Oscar predicting that seems to go on. Hope I spelled everything right but I have a meeting so I can’t check it.
If they really want to get more viewers, they should make the show on a SATURDAY night, not Sunday.
Me.: So simple yet…maybe you’re right?
I was addressing his apparent feeling that the Oscars should be concerned with whether the TV audience SEES the films in question.
Oscar Ratings History 101: The most-watched broadcasts in hoopla history are those in which the TV audience feels invested in the films nominated.
So yes, Kris, it seems to me grossly thick-headed of AMPAS to have such a cavalier disregard for the viewers — viewers that make the Board of Governors’ ratings-fixation seem so panicked and anxious — by scheduling the ceremony on whatever date best suits their own comfy cocoon.
**“Two kinds of people watch the Oscars. The people who watch EVERY other awards show like crack addicts. And the people who don’t watch ANY other awards show except the Oscars.”
…is a reach at best with no real foundation.”**
yikes, Kris, how is that a reach? Either Oscar viewers watch other awards shows or they don’t. Do we need Pythagoras to devise a theorem to prove that?
The season the way it currently is structured creates grade A suspense. Then again, I was one of the only ones not bored by last years go around.
Don’t like it. Not enough time to see and mull over the films. I also like having some precursors beforehand, makes it all the more fun.
Ryan: It’s just that you seem to think people either obsessively watch precursors or not at all. There can be casual viewing and awareness.
Kris: and I feel you’re too quick to equate “casual viewing and awareness” with burnout and fatigue.