In Contention

Tag: Academy Awards

  • Hammond talks the season’s changes

    Golden GlobesIt’s a year of considerable upheaval in the film awards landscape.  This year has already brought a new AMPAS president, the addition of five new slots to the Best Picture category and a refined voting process for the top field as well.  But that’s not where the changes end.

    Pete Hammond is back on board for another year of his weekly Notes on a Season columns at The Envelope, and in this year’s introductory piece, he charts a number of other alterations to the season’s status quo:

    On Jan. 17, the Golden Globes, in a grab for increased ratings, are going to be broadcast live coast-to-coast on NBC for the first time; the BFCA’s Critics Choice Movie Awards are moving from Santa Monica to Hollywood two days earlier on Jan. 15 and will be tweaking its VH1 on-air category lineup and broadening its audience potential; the pre-Oscar Saturday tradition of a tented Independent Spirit Awards is also moving away from the sands of Santa Monica and into an unnamed venue on Friday night instead — a first in its 25-year history. Plus insiders are hinting to us that the Producers Guild may also be making a MAJOR voting change…

    That “major change,” Hammond ultimately confides, is that the PGA’s list of nominees might stretch to 10 as well this year.  Check out the rest at Notes on a Season.

  • Oscar Idol?

    OscarsI’ve been having a number of conversations today about the Academy’s new Best Picture voting rules.  Some see it as further evidence of the organization snuffing out campaigning by leveling the playing field even more (which, if we’re being honest, is bad for AMPAS business).  Others see it as the fairest way of establishing a winner.  I’m somewhere in the middle, but all of that is neither here nor there.  I ran across this comment at The Hot Blog and I just had to share:

    They need to treat the nominees as a top 10 list and not “nominees.” Then, structure the broadcast around the top 10 like American Idol and gradually count down the vote tabs from #10 to #1 throughout the program to create suspense.

    Call me crazy, but this would be brilliant.  I kind of understand the desire to spare the feelings of those who would be “voted off” first.  That’s why the tabulations are destroyed after a few years.  No one wants people to know they were in last place, but come on — the nomination is the victory in many of those circumstances.  And talk about building a viewership.  We’re already inching toward People’s Choice Awards territory as it is, so why not bring all the walls down?

    Thoughts?

  • The Oscars are moving back to March for a year

    OscarsI’ve been hearing a lot of folks over the last few years tell me they think the Oscars should move back to March.  I’m not entirely sure why, but there is support out there.  You’ll recall, 2005 marked the first year the ceremony was pulled a full month back from the end of March to the end of February, drastically (and for some, thankfully) shortening the season.

    Well, good news for those who want things expanded.  It seems the show will move two weeks to March 7 next year.  The brief from the AP:

    The Oscars will be presented a little later in 2010.

    Sid Ganis, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, says the 82nd Annual Academy Awards will air live March 7 on ABC television from the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles.

    This year’s telecast aired Feb. 22. The sleeper hit “Slumdog Millionaire” won best picture, Sean Penn won best actor and Kate Winslet scored the trophy for best actress.

    Of course, this is actually pretty good news for entertainment outlets like Variety, The Envelope and The Hollywood Reporter, which depend on studio advertising during the awards season to stay afloat.  An extra two weeks can mean a lot of dough to them.  But this will be a one year deal to avoid the Winter Olympics, “Peter” tells us in the comments below.

    The seemingly endless awards season will be a little longer next year.  Buckle up.

  • Is the Oscar schedule too short?

    The Academy AwardsFive years ago, the Academy whittled a schedule some complained was too long down a bit, chopping off a month at the end of the process and bringing the annual Oscar ceremony into late February rather than late March.  It was something of a significant event, if you didn’t happen to be watching back then, and the question has circulated ever since: did it really help?

    A bevy of reasons was dished out by the organization at the time: “It’s for the films,” “It’s for the ratings,” etc.  But a lot of folks in the industry, certainly those who cover this racket, have since belly-ached over how much of an exhausting sprint the season seems to be now.

    For me, I used to hate how drawn out the process was.  It seemed to go on for too long and the next year’s crop was REALLY in our face before you knew it.  But I will admit that the new schedule has been equally problematic.  I begin to crash right around this time of year, because the entire awards schedule shifted to accommodate the Oscar move, of course.  There are a lot of shows, a lot of key dates crammed into one really tight space, one already dominated by the holiday season.  I long for the end nowadays for different reasons than before: it puts you on the verge of collapse.

    Well Variety’s Tim Gray has written a piece addressing this issue.  The unsurprising verdict: he doesn’t like the shortened schedule.  I say unsurprising because an outlet that just laid off a chunk of its workforce and found itself struggling for the expected advertising revenue would like nothing more than another month of ad sales this time of year.

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