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The Oscars: What did YOU think?

davideduardo

davideduardo

Moderator/Administrator
Staff member
OK, they are over. Different, unique, strange. What did you think and how much of the show did you watch.

My opinion:

"I watched the whole thing. I had the same reaction I might get when driving through a small market and finding a station so bad that you can't tune out because you'd miss the next stupidity, idiocy or absurdity. It was entertaining in its banality."
 
How do you do an awards show for movie during a year when no one was able to go to theaters? You call it the Streaming Oscars. So the winner of Best Picture was "Nomadland," on Hulu. Another big winner was "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" on Netflix. You heard a lot of thanks to Apple and Amazon. Some people complain about "big tech," but without them, there would have been no Oscars this year.

www.cnn.com

Academy Awards 2021: 'Nomadland' wins best picture at an Oscars that spreads the wealth | CNN

"Nomadland," director Chloé Zhao's small-boned movie about nomads in America, earned best picture at a 93rd Academy Awards defined by the pandemic, as movies that premiered on streaming services ruled the ceremony -- an in-person event mounted under Covid protocols.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com

What did I think? The show looked great, shot in one of my favorite places: Union Station in LA. But truthfully, if you didn't see the movies, they might as well speak another language. It's another example of how the dilution of culture has made shows like this irrelevant. TV is becoming like radio...it's being niched out to the point where a 1 share is a big success.
 
TheBigA said:
What did I think? The show looked great, shot in one of my favorite places: Union Station in LA. But truthfully, if you didn't see the movies, they might as well speak another language. It's another example of how the dilution of culture has made shows like this irrelevant. TV is becoming like radio...it's being niched out to the point where a 1 share is a big success.
Click to expand...
I love Union Station, too. I used to go almost weekly to San Diego on the train, as the HBC stations were just across the street from the terminal downtown there. The little restaurant was great in the early 2000's, but did not seem as nice the last few times I was there.

Sitting in the terminal and just absorbing the atmosphere was fun. You could almost see Gene Autry or Charlie Chaplin walk by "on their way East".

What happens to movies is what has happened to network TV. 8 to 10 million is a big audience... in a nation of 330 million. No longer can people comment on "Dallas" around the coffee machine, and 96% of them have not seen even the most viewed show.

Sports is still the big uniting thing among people of diverse backgrounds. But media is no longer a shared experience.
 
People watch the Oscars to see big stars. If that's true, they were disappointed. Brad Pitt was there, and he's a big star. Glenn Close was there. But not many others. Several winners, including Best Actor Anthony Hopkins, weren't there. Because of Covid, most of the attendees were nominees. Since these movies were primarily streaming content, they didn't have big familiar box office names. In fact the biggest, most familiar names were heard during the memorial segment. Where are the big stars? Gone.

So we know the TV ratings will be awful, but the one consolation for the Grammy Awards and the Country Awards was people wanted to watch the musical performances afterwards. Well, unfortunately, they won't have that to look forward to. I mean, what moments from the Oscars are driving social media? Glenn Close dancing when she won, and Anthony Hopkins as a no show. That's it. I mean it was great that we have our first Korean winner, but who is she? Even the Tony Awards have some music. Maybe Netflix can help in some way, since they won most of the awards.
 
TheBigA said:
TV is becoming like radio...it's being niched out to the point where a 1 share is a big success.
Click to expand...
Remember the old generic term "the mass media"? Thirty and forty years ago it was about a fairly limited number of organizations that produced content for a lot of consumers.

Now consumers have to sift through a huge mass of media competing for attention...when even consumers become their own creators. It's very hard for any one outlet to get any traction. Quality suffers, and banality wins.
 
DavidEduardo said:
What happens to movies is what has happened to network TV. 8 to 10 million is a big audience... in a nation of 330 million. No longer can people comment on "Dallas" around the coffee machine, and 96% of them have not seen even the most viewed show.

Sports is still the big uniting thing among people of diverse backgrounds. But media is no longer a shared experience.
Click to expand...
I remember there has been talks for some time to make the media, the WGA, SAG-AFTRA, the Emmy's and the Oscars diverse to reflect the many demos of the USA. This is what we agreed to with varying degrees from making new media outlets to making management diverse at content production operations and at WGA and SAG-AFTRA. But some of these strategies have been out there for the past 20 years though.
 
joebtsflk1 said:
Remember the old generic term "the mass media"?
Click to expand...

Of course we're dealing with Hollywood, and they know that because they're part of the reason why that's changed.

news.yahoo.com

Yes, Oscar ratings will be abysmal. Here's what really matters

Steven Soderbergh has promised the COVID-era Oscars will be a "movie" — but what kind? And does it matter now that we can finally actually see movies?
news.yahoo.com news.yahoo.com

Still, there apparently was enough optimism about the show that it was sold out:

 
Also the big stars might not of made a Movie since last Oscar's. Also at Award shows most that are up are Streaming shows and not that much anymore from the Major Networks.
 
I quit at 11, but I'll see the rest tonight. I did see Questlove say goodbye live at 11:15 but I had nearly a half hour more to go just of the third hour. I recorded each hour separately so I could delete it.

It is fortunate that I saw several other awards shows where most of the same people and movies were nominated. Very few clips. How do you honor visual effects without showing visual effects? How do you honor costumes, sets, music? At least they played the nominated songs but there was only one I liked.

Based on clips I saw on the other awards shows, I'd like to see most of the nominated movies. It'll be a while because I'm cheap.

What the show really needed was an orchestra. Even if other awards shows played garbage, this show always had classy music played by an orchestra. This year they had Questlove. I was not impressed. If they could have recordings of the sophisticated orchestra music from the past, and recordings of the movies' theme songs for when each movie won, that would be much better.

I did like how no one was cutting off the great acceptance speeches.

And the room where the awards were presented, if not always accepted, looked great. Very sophisticated compared to a gigantic auditorium.

What a waste of time Lil Rel's game was, though seeing Glenn Close react to that one song was almost worth it. I actually like that song not for the lyrics, but the music. But the last TV series that was so bad I didn't bother with a second episode was Lil Rel's, and I was there for Sinbad.
 
Early ratings were just released, and the audience drop was about the same as the Grammy Awards:

www.hollywoodreporter.com

TV Ratings: Oscars Slump to All-Time Low

ABC's broadcast joins a host of other awards shows in falling by a large amount from past years.
www.hollywoodreporter.com www.hollywoodreporter.com

Still, ABC won the night, and it was their largest audience since the NBA Finals in October.
 
TheBigA said:
Early ratings were just released, and the audience drop was about the same as the Grammy Awards:

www.hollywoodreporter.com

TV Ratings: Oscars Slump to All-Time Low

ABC's broadcast joins a host of other awards shows in falling by a large amount from past years.
www.hollywoodreporter.com www.hollywoodreporter.com

Still, ABC won the night, and it was their largest audience since the NBA Finals in October.
Click to expand...

If the Oscars got less than 10 million viewers, could it be safe to say that the Tony Awards (or any other very-niche awards show) will get less than 1 million?
 
EricStein said:
If the Oscars got less than 10 million viewers, could it be safe to say that the Tony Awards (or any other very-niche awards show) will get less than 1 million?
Click to expand...

Maybe a bit more. They had over 5 million in 2019, so you cut that in half, then half again, you come up with about 1.5 million.
 
TheBigA said:
Maybe a bit more. They had over 5 million in 2019, so you cut that in half, then half again, you come up with about 1.5 million.
Click to expand...
I still don't get why CBS hangs on to the Tonys. It's pretty much a niche audience show that get very few viewers in places outside the big cities. Better suited for streaming or linear cable.
 
EricStein said:
I still don't get why CBS hangs on to the Tonys. It's pretty much a niche audience show that get very few viewers in places outside the big cities. Better suited for streaming or linear cable.
Click to expand...

How about the Kennedy Center Honors? I can only believe it's easier to sell events than regular series. They're selling prestige, not audience numbers.
 
TheBigA said:
Early ratings were just released, and the audience drop was about the same as the Grammy Awards:

www.hollywoodreporter.com

TV Ratings: Oscars Slump to All-Time Low

ABC's broadcast joins a host of other awards shows in falling by a large amount from past years.
www.hollywoodreporter.com www.hollywoodreporter.com

Still, ABC won the night, and it was their largest audience since the NBA Finals in October.
Click to expand...
Ratings down 50 percent from last year. The Pandemic and changing times are the reason. It just seems to belong to a different era. The Oscars have always been bloated, but the best years usually had a compelling host and magical qualities.

Anthony Hopkins is a great actor. It sounds like some people are upset that Chadwick Boseman didn't win posthumously. I didn't see either film, but his tragic death shouldn't be the deciding factor for Best Actor. At least they didn't botch the ending like 2017 when they announced the wrong winner...
 
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