For years the shrinking audience for the telecasts has always been blamed upon the same premise. This being that only popular films winning Oscars© draw an audience.
In reality if you do nothing more than go back to the Academy Awards© TV Ratings Data, 1953-2010 you will see something that challenges this observation. Depending upon how you describe popular motion pictures you will see that during this time 39 non popular feature films have won the best picture award while only 18 features films that were extremely popular won the best picture award.
It has been said more often than not that non popular films are picked because of a left leaning slant by the academy members. It is true to the extent that 7 out of the last 10 best winners have leaned to the left and 3 have been old fashioned very crowd pleasing blockbusters.
Since the beginning of the television era the winning films for the most part have always been the least popular choice. 36 films have leaned left and none has ever leaned right while still being popular. That is unless you call “Ben Hur,” written by General Lou Wallace a right wing film.
Popular versus not popular as is the least problem that the awards show actually has.
Problem 1: The main thing people have to understand is that the telecast is not put on as a popularity show for the viewing audience. It is a show created around what the members of the academy think is best in each field. Sometimes popular films do well and others times they do not.
You’re seeing upon the screen what the voting members of the academy think are their ideal of what is best. I have been to question and answer screenings with academy members and they do take the films they are looking at very seriously as do those answering the questions about the film that has just been show.
The choices of what is picked and not picked are based on their point of view and not that of box office receipts or even critical acclaim.
Problem 2: There are too many awards shows and by the time the Oscars © comes on you already know whom is going to win because each voting branch of the academy has its own guild with a far larger membership then the academy has.
The simple answer would seem to be move the Academy Awards © forward and then no conflict. Problem being then the other award shows become irrelevant and like those states holding primaries all then would want to move forward. You want to see the Oscar © show done in July?
Problem 3: The show has been for the most part had TV people producing a show dealing with the feature film industry. It’s often like two countries speaking the same language but the words having a different meaning.
The TV people just do not seem to be able to put a show on that shows the grandeur of the feature film on a small screen. Even small films seem to get lost when trying to show the slightest excerpts of them on the small screen.
Problem 4: The show has lost their audience. I was there in the beginning of demographics when it was decided that TV shows should be aimed at a younger audience so that advertisers could get the most bang for their dollar.
That audience doesn’t watch much over the air TV anymore. Too many choices of what to do with their time
The audience that does watch TV was left at the train station and isn’t coming back.
Every now and then you have that Oscar© show that seems to click on all burners but for the most part the TV people seem to be stuck in the rut that they can attract a younger audience to the show. They are going to keep giving you tried and true no matter how often it fails.
Today the Academy Awards© is a show best seen on a cable network because its day has passed as an American over the air show. That though is not likely to happen for some time to come because while it has lost its popularity in the USA it is still a ratings power house elsewhere in the world where the audience does understand it is not a popularity contest but a measure of what Academy members think is the best of the year in their eyes.