Oscar Telecast Flops_May be an All Time Low!

[umfan]

https://www.arcamax.com/entertainment/entertainmenttoday/s-2056246

The ratings are low enough where some episodes of weekly shows, This Is Us comes to mind, may end up higher. This telecast may not be in the Top 5 for the year. The Academy continues down its current path to its own peril.

 

[TheBigA]

Comparing anything to past years is no longer useful. Every year, there's more competition, so every year, fewer people will all watch one thing at the same time. So all you can do is compare it to everything else on at the time, and in that way, nothing else came close.

 

[FreddyE1977]

IMO the reasons are similar to those which now cause Federal funding of PBS to be in jeopardy.

Mainly that at least half of us who are politically right-of-center don't watch televised entertainment
so that people who do not agree with us can shove their political opinions down our throats.

Anyone who thinks this has not been a problem with the Oscars in recent years has
not been paying attention.

 

[TheBigA]

IMO the reasons are similar to those which now cause Federal funding of PBS to be in jeopardy.

Oh come on. One thing has absolutely nothing to do with the other. It's not a political thing at all. The people on Antiques Roadshow aren't forcing political opinions on anyone. And there is no federal law regarding the Oscars.

And truthfully, there wasn't much politics in the Oscars, unless you think sexual harassment is political.

 

[TheBigA]

The same thing was said about the Olympics. Their ratings were down compared to previous years, but there's no question that the Olympics and the Oscars sucked viewers away from other shows. The headline for cable ratings Sunday night is how a number of regular series scored their all-time low because of the Oscar telecast.

So the conclusion here is if people were watching TV in real time, the likelihood was they were watching the Oscars. The problem is fewer and fewer people watch TV in real time. That goes for the Oscars, the Olympics, the Super Bowl, and any other event you can come up with. It's similar to radio, where at one time radio stations got 20 shares. Not any more. The more choices people have, the more it dilutes the numbers.

It's not like they're not aware of these things, but quite often, they'll watch a few days later, or engage with other people in social media or message boards like this one. The folks at the Academy and the networks are trying to capitalize on that in some way, building their own engagement platforms and that kind of thing. But the days of people sitting on the couch passively watching a TV show without wanting to comment on it are ending.

 

[landtuna]

I cannot remember the name of the poll but I saw one a couple days ago where only 4% of viewers thought it was "above average". The remainder said it was "the usual" or disliked it or didn't watch at all (the overall highest number).

To me it has always been one of the most boring of all TV "entertainment" shows.

 

[LKellerIII]

The same thing was said about the Olympics. Their ratings were down compared to previous years, but there's no question that the Olympics and the Oscars sucked viewers away from other shows. The headline for cable ratings Sunday night is how a number of regular series scored their all-time low because of the Oscar telecast.

So the conclusion here is if people were watching TV in real time, the likelihood was they were watching the Oscars. The problem is fewer and fewer people watch TV in real time. That goes for the Oscars, the Olympics, the Super Bowl, and any other event you can come up with. It's similar to radio, where at one time radio stations got 20 shares. Not any more. The more choices people have, the more it dilutes the numbers.

It's not like they're not aware of these things, but quite often, they'll watch a few days later, or engage with other people in social media or message boards like this one. The folks at the Academy and the networks are trying to capitalize on that in some way, building their own engagement platforms and that kind of thing. But the days of people sitting on the couch passively watching a TV show without wanting to comment on it are ending.

I do see FreddyE1977's point about the Oscars and politics being "shoved down the throats" of conservatives. The Oscars are becoming more political than ever, and if I were not a snowflake libtard, it would probably bother me too. I'm not sure if that effects the ratings however.

But the real reason I'm posting is to defend PBS and NPR. The idea that they are somehow a liberal propaganda machine is just a giant steaming pile of BS, and always has been. PBS has had many shows helmed by conservatives. Does Firing Line with William F. Buckley ring a bell? Johh Mc Laughlin? These guys were on PBS for about 250 years, and the only reason their shows are gone is that they are inconveniently dead. In April, PBS is introducing a new conservative program in the "spirit of Firing Line" called The Principle, though I don't know much else about it. NPR has always had very balanced coverage from all sides of the political spectrum, and do an especially excellent job with business news, IMO.

If the charge is that most media reporters are liberal, I think that is true, but that's true of all outlets except for Fox News, not just PBS and NPR, so IMO - if Trump and his ilk want to cut funding for public broadcasting, that's a valid political position, but they need to get off this myth that it's because because of liberal bias. That's just a lie.

 

[TheBigA]

I do see FreddyE1977's point about the Oscars and politics being "shoved down the throats" of conservatives.

This goes both ways. I watched most of the show, and I really didn't hear a lot of political opinion. I heard a lot of boring speeches running through a lot of names of people I didn't know, talking about movies I didn't see. That's not good TV. But the fact is people have opinions, and people like to hear those opinions and comment on them. That's what's driving the conversation now. In the old days, people would tune in to see what people wore. Not any more. They want to hear people attack the people they don't like, whoever they are. They want to have something to talk about, and the Oscars give them that opportunity. The top story all day yesterday at Fox News was attacking the Oscars. If it was so unpopular, why was it their lead story? It riles them up. It motivates their base. That's what they want. If the Oscars was all happy talk, people wouldn't have anything to complain about.

 

[vchimpanzee]

I enjoyed the show, but they spent so much time on stuff that was irrelevant. Although if I hadn't seen any of the movies, I suppose that irrelevant stuff was what made the show worth seeing. It was about honoring the best in movies in the past year.

The tributes to the greatest movies of all time should have been part of the Red Carpet show. I remember them doing stuff like that in some years. That's not to say I don't enjoy all those brief clips from old movies. It was nice to see all those best actor winners and best actress winners.

At least they started it at 8. It ran until nearly 1:00 some years when it started at 9.

 

[TVCOOL]

Because the movies that people rarely known wins Oscars.

 

[landtuna]

I enjoyed the show, but they spent so much time on stuff that was irrelevant. Although if I hadn't seen any of the movies, I suppose that irrelevant stuff was what made the show worth seeing. It was about honoring the best in movies in the past year.

The Academy Awards has always been about Hollywood politics (battles between the egos of the big studio execs), puffing about their accomplishments and driving demand for additional customers. It is perhaps and without a doubt the largest self-serving bit of puffery any industry enjoys.

As far as "the best movies of the year" - balderdash. Reference my last paragraph but then also consider that movies are like food. The same dish served to two different people will be admired by one and disliked by the other. Some of the technical awards are judged by insiders and not as much subject to the actor and director's egos but those are also the ones the common viewer doesn't care about.

Some of the awards are understandable but irrelevant. Best Kid's Animation? If your kid liked it then hooray. If not, it wasn't worth squat. We're going to pay attention to a five-year old's opinion?

The tributes to the greatest movies of all time should have been part of the Red Carpet show. I remember them doing stuff like that in some years. That's not to say I don't enjoy all those brief clips from old movies. It was nice to see all those best actor winners and best actress winners.

Like virtually all other entertainment, movies have to be judged in their environment and time. Many old movies are classics because at the time they were screened they touched the public. Played today most people would nod off. There is no practical or accurate way to decide on "the best (anything) of all time".

 

[installLSC]

Let's not ignore the real problem; the Oscars don't nominate the mass appeal pictures anymore. Movies like "Three Billboards" and "Shape of Water" almost entirely played at art theaters and weren't seen my the heavy majority of moviegoers. The Oscars these days almost entirely go to self-conciously arty, moody movies. Compare this to the 80s or 90s when flicks like "Tootsie", "A Fish Called Wanda", and "My Cousin Vinny" could and did win Oscars. How can you root for movies you've never seen?

 

[nomadcowatbk]

Let's not ignore the real problem; the Oscars don't nominate the mass appeal pictures anymore. Movies like "Three Billboards" and "Shape of Water" almost entirely played at art theaters and weren't seen my the heavy majority of moviegoers. The Oscars these days almost entirely go to self-conciously arty, moody movies. Compare this to the 80s or 90s when flicks like "Tootsie", "A Fish Called Wanda", and "My Cousin Vinny" could and did win Oscars. How can you root for movies you've never seen?

maybe you can root against movies you hated or stars you hate, Fox news viewers hate Hollywood and these headlines are like crack to them

 

[nomadcowatbk]

will the other networks start running new episodes against the Oscars since they don't nominate movies that people have actually seen? ratings wouldn't be any better if it was trump lovefest

 

[AbrahamJSimpson]

will the other networks start running new episodes against the Oscars since they don't nominate movies that people have actually seen? ratings wouldn't be any better if it was trump lovefest

We're a ways off from that yet, at least on the broadcast stations. But AMC sent the zombies...er, walkers....into the fray with an original episode, and I'm sure some other cable networks stuck to their schedules with original series.

But look, live TV as it's been known virtually since inception is declining, and big live events--while still big, and 22 million or whatever it is is still big--are not immune to that trend, political winds aside. Certainly it doesn't help compared to years when box-office successes (to varying degrees) like Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump and Titanic were part of the mix, but you aren't going to see the big numbers of the past repeating themselves when people have so many more choices (including the aforementioned cable series). Let's not pretend that going back several decades there wasn't a "there's nothing else on" factor for SOME of the audience. Those folks, many of them anyway, can dial up Hulu/Netflix/Prime/whatever and find something to their taste.

 

[umfan]

The point is well taken though. The other networks haven't really counterprogrammed against the Oscars because they were sure to lose. With this weakness, that mindset may change further hastening this ratings decline. In the not too distant future, the Academy may have to actually pay to keep it on network TV.

 

[TheBigA]

In the not too distant future, the Academy may have to actually pay to keep it on network TV.

I doubt it. It's like conservative talk radio. Its ratings are declining, and its demos are rising, but there is no other talk format that can attract the kind of mass audience it still gets. That's what they're selling: That mass number. The mass number for the Oscars, the Grammy Awards, the Super Bowl, and all the events may be declining, but it's still a big mass number that dwarfs everything else on live TV at the time. If you want to reach a lot of people at once in real time, there's no better way to do it. So it doesn't matter if the ratings keep going down as compared to previous years. They're not selling that comparative number. They're selling this year's number compared to everything else at the same time.

 

[umfan]

True, but it still needs to be profitable for the broadcaster. An Oscars telecast is very expensive to produce. If the ad sales don't cover the rights fee plus expenses, why would anyone air it? NBC still makes money with lower Olympics ratings. Perhaps a more likely outcome is that the fee paid to the Academy for the right to air the telecast falls to some nominal amount and they'll need to subsidize part of the production costs by handling some aspects of the preparation itself. Effectively the same result, and a very real outcome if the lower ratings trend continues. There's no real reason to think it will reverse.

 

[AbrahamJSimpson]

There's a big gap between point A and point B. A trend is a trend, and periodically there may be hiccups and bounces along the way. But the mass audience becomes MORE valuable even as the total mass diminishes bit by bit, because there are just a handful of programs that deliver on that scale and with a largely real-time, engaged audience. This isn't the daytime soap opera emmys we're talking about.

 

[TheBigA]

If the ad sales don't cover the rights fee plus expenses, why would anyone air it?

Once again, nothing else is attracting those kinds of numbers. Of course when you negotiate the rights fee, you can bring up the declining number to bring down the rights fee. But really, what you want to do is get the rights to other platforms because the live broadcast isn't where the money is. That's how MTV and CMT are still making money with their various awards shows, even though live viewership has declined. Same with the Olympics. More platforms mean more ways to sell the brand to different audiences.