Some of our younger readers may think of the Academy Awards as a weekend-capping tradition, having taken place on a Sunday for the last 12 years running. However, seasoned Oscar-watchers will remember the days when, rather than rounding out the week, the ceremony kicked it off, falling on Monday so as not to interfere with the weekend box-office.
Now, Variety reports that we may be returning to a Monday night Oscarcast, this time to scoot out the way of the NFL:
The league’s players and owners are negotiating a new Collective Bargaining Agreement that will add two games to the regular season — a decision that could theoretically land Hollywood’s biggest event and the Super Bowl on the same day. The move from 16 to 18 games, according to sources, is a fait accompli and will go into effect for the 2012-13 season.
The story continues:
Bruce Davis, exec director for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, is well aware of the fluid situation and is preparing for the possibility of shifting the Oscars back to a Monday, its home for decades before the Sunday shift began in 1999.
Davis said that if the Super Bowl plants itself in that final Sunday of February in 2013 and beyond, he’d give more consideration to moving to a Monday in February rather than a Sunday in March.
Starting as it does in the wee hours on the my side of the world, the Oscar ceremony is pretty inconvenient whatever day it settles on. That aside, I quite liked the recent tradition — to me, a Sunday broadcast has a greater sense of occasion (while also allowing geeks like us a whole day to prepare our Oscar parties). Have you any strong feelings one way or t’other?
(Thanks to We Are Movie Geeks’ Michelle McCue for alerting me to the story.)
[Photo: Bdonline.co.uk]
Comments
10 responses to “Back to Monday for Oscar?”
18 games is a disaster unless they reduce the pre-season by half. The Player’s Association really needs to stick up for its guys not getting destroyed. Though I like Simmons’ idea of two bye weeks.
As someone who follows the NFL more than the Oscars, they are being hasty with the idea of an 18 game season. The players’ union is already mad about the compensation system and the lack of a proper salary cap, so there is no way they will give up an 18 game season so soon. We are looking at a 2011 strike more than anything.
Wait, so…the Oscars might be a single day after the Superbowl?
Hey NFL! Stick to the 16-game schedule. It’s perfect now and it can be better if you do it like MLB.
15 games against all the members of your conference and one game against your local rival in the other conference. (ex. 49ers/Raiders – Jets/Giants)
Mondays could work for me. Watch the awards and then watch the 3-hour delay West Coast feed of WWE Monday Night Raw. Followed by Daily/Colbert.
Screw American football. It was a dumb sport in the first place. Bring on the Oscars!
Why don’t they just trim two games off the preseason instead? Anyway, all the more reason to nut up and move to January.
@ Kristopher: Exactly!
Just move the damned Oscarcast to the first Sunday in January and call it a night!
Isn’t the regular season 17 games now? If so they’d only be adding one game. Unless they really want 19.
Hope this doesn’t happpen. As someone who works AND studies during weekdays, this would be murder for me.
16 regular season games has its advantages – it makes every game extraordinarily important.
However, 16 games is not very many, and watching more would be good. There’s no reason why the players shouldn’t physically be up to more. Looking at comparable sports like Rugby or Aussie Rules, the NFL season is way shorter and there’s no sane argument that could possibly suggest that NFL is more punishing than those two. And adding two games shouldn’t harm the ‘each game being important’ factor.
As for Oscars, move it up to jan 1st already. No-one wants to watch the Oscars and have a 99% idea of who will win all of the big awards, which is what we’ve got right now.