Decker

This is the first time that an Oscar category has been truly subjective. I mean you could argue if a musical score is original or adapted, or if a live action/animated hybrid movie like Pete's Dragon or Roger Rabbit was eligible for the Best Animated Feature category, but never has an entire category been subject to interpretation.

Mr. Flix

Political grandstanding.

I know, I know... politics have always crept into Oscar speeches. But the balance has tipped away from a fun celebration of film to heavy-handed soap-boxing. Watching A-list celebrity millionaires in their designer duds clutching golden statues while spewing bitterness is alienating to the audience at home, even if you agree with them.

People watch movies to escape and be moved, and the Oscars should be a celebration of that form of art. I'm all for free speech, and the winners can use their 60 seconds to say whatever they want, but that doesn't mean the audience has to want to listen to it. So the producers are silly to be scratching their heads over why ratings keep dropping and thinking a category shake-up is all it's going to take.

Abob Teff

Those examples are some of the best examples of where the Oscars have gone wrong. Well, the first three at least. I still have never seen Braveheart, so I guess I can’t lump it in.

I’m with Paff. Call me a film snob if you want.

Who gives a shit if an Oscar film is popular or not. The Oscars are supposed to be about cinematic achievement, not popularity. If it is THE BEST and popular, great! If it is popular but not THE BEST, then it doesn’t deserve an Oscar.

If the Academy wants to change this, I guess they can have fun destroying what their organization was built to represent. There are plenty of other awards/organizations that will be happy to become the prestigious award in cinema while the Academy becomes another MTV Viewer Awards or Nickelodeon’s Kids Choice Awards.

Abob Teff

I don’t think politics is THE problem, but it is part of it. I think Mr. Flix was more on track with “it just isn’t entertaining anymore”. The world we live in is different now and that will lead to a variety of reasons.

How are ratings for other awards shows (even other industries)?

Josh-da-man

Yeah, the short films and documentary categories are useless to the tv audience. These are films of limited interest, and, on top of that, impossible for most of the audience to even be able to watch.

They could also ditch all of the musical numbers, handjobby montages, and unfunny comedy. Half of the onstage banter is as awkward as DeNiro reading off of cue cards when he's hosting SNL.

Mr. Flix

The Golden Globes took an 11% dip in viewers 2017 - 2018. The former was hosted by Jimmy Fallon (whose humor tends to avoid politics). The latter was hosted by Seth Myers, who promised beforehand that his monologue would not avoid politics. The Harvey Weinstein mess was fresh on everyone's minds at the time and that may have had an effect on the ratings too.

The SAG awards had a 33% dip in viewers 2017 - 2018.

The Grammys dipped to an all-time low in viewership this year, losing 24% of its audience from the year before.

The Tony Awards had a slight uptick in viewership this year compared to 2017, but the 2017 awards were up against the Stanley Cup Finals, which cut into that year's ratings.

sherm42

I feel for the Academy. It’s not their fault. The movie industry changed. There are barely any middle cost films anymore, which were always the Oscar bait. The 30-50 million dollar films that a great number of people would see don’t exist anymore. Now, it’s either 150-250 million dollar blockbusters or 1-5 million dollar indie films which no one has seen. If that’s all you have to choose from, the academy members are going to vote to nominate all smaller films that almost no one has seen. As a result, the audience for the ceremony is dropping because people haven’t seen the nominated films and don’t care about them.

The Academy can’t change Hollywood to make more mid range costing films, so here you go.

JeffTheAlpaca

They don't need a new category but a new host!

If they bring back Kimmel I am going to throw up!

What they need to do is eliminate all the special effects and the smaller categories from the broadcast and trim the length of the show. They always do the smaller awards for 2 and 1/2 hrs and then throw in the major awards in the last 20 minutes

Red Hood

This doesn't solve any issue that the Oscars have right now and I find the inclusion of this category ridiculous. The Oscars have 4 top issues:

1- Nominating films based on the reputation of the director
2- Nominating films based on lobbying from the studios and not the quality of the film. This was all the rage back in the Weinstein era of Miramax
3- Academy members not watching all the movies, just the one's they feel interested in and voting for them. This is the only reason why the shitty Kobe Bryant short won this year.
4- The Academy being out of touch and being bias towards dramas and dismissing anything that has to do with action, comedy, horror or any other genre. This last one filters out great films that become classics yet were not even considered to for this awards due to their genre.


I always liked that the Academy nominates obscure films, with high quality in story, cinematography and direction. The issue has been that more recently shitty films have been nominated for the Oscars while others like for example, District 9 or City of God or Pan's Labyrinth or Coco don't get nominated for Best Picture due to the bias I mentioned above or because in the minds of the Academy, they only fit one category like best foreign film or best animated film. Animated films get equally shafted as action films do when it comes to the Oscars. Films like Ratatouille, Spirited Away and Wall-E deserved to be at least nominated for the Best Film. This is what the Academy needs to change, instead of pandering to the populace by adding a category no one asked for.

windom

Why don't they just get rid of the gender specific acting awards? MTV did it for their awards. There's no reason why males and females shouldn't compete in the same acting category in this day. That would cut 2 categories out of the show.

stvn1974

Can you imagine the shitstorm it would cause if all five or even ten nomination were male if you combined the actor/actress awards?

GoldenJCJ

Except it would cut two categories that people actually tune in to watch.

My reasons for thinking this is a bad idea and cheapens the Academy awards had already been mentioned but I can’t help but think this Popular Film Oscar will be to show political correctness. There’s now doubt Black Panther or Wonder Woman would have taken the award if it was around the last few years.

fumanstan

The funny thing to me about how this won't "fix" what's wrong with the awards is that in this very thread you have a bunch of different reasons about what's wrong, whether it's the length of show, celebrity politics, uninteresting categories, movies people don't care about, bad presenters, etc.

Since I like the idea of awarding popularity with movie tastes that skew more casual, I imagine it does help at least one of the problems that seem to come up.

islandclaws

You really don't know?

Hollywood liberals, especially those with a stake in the awards (read: Disney) are practically creaming themselves over the chance to bolster ratings by giving out a new award to a diverse, crowd-pleasing, four-quadrant tentpole led by minorities. And one with strong women? I can practically hear their collective orgasm.

Mabuse

The heyday of the Oscar telecast occurred because their you were, at home, and you turned on your tv and there were all of these people you usually only saw at the movies. There’s John Wayne and Rex Harrison and Jack Nicholson! At home!!!! And Bob Hope and Billy Crystal are being irreverent and breaking down that traditional wall between audiences and stars.

That alone was novel. Entertainment has changed. They need to massively revamp the show.

TomOpus

They just installed like 700 or 900 new voting members recently. I wonder if this is part of that.

GoldenJCJ

While I wouldn’t mind seeing them cut the useless dance numbers and dopey-as-shit skits (has anyone, anywhere ever asked to see celebrities visit patrons in the movie theater across the street?!) I’ve always loved seeing the tributes to “The Movies” montages in the shows. It reminds me why I love the movies...it also reminds me how little I care about the majority of today’s movies.

Decker

Well if that is one of the four major problems with the Oscars, it is one that is quite literally solved with this award.

dex14

District 9 was nominated. Pan’s Labyrinth was nominated for best foreign.

Mabuse

If you look back to the ‘40s and watch “the Oscars” (if you can even call it that) it was a dinner at the Roosevelt Hotel covered by newsreel photographers. It was nothing. In the ‘50s and ‘60s there was this huge leap. TV producers decided to turn it into a big show. Musical numbers, tributes to legends, an MC whose goal was to entertain those at home, not those in attendance. It was a quantum leap from the ‘40s.

The Oscars needs that kind of leap. Entertainment has changed so much. You can’t keep using the old format.

fujishig

So you'd have what, the red carpet and like a 30 minute show? ABC/Disney are demanding these changes to get ratings up, but they certainly don't want to cut it down to less than three hours.

I think Hollywood wants this as the premiere annual awards celebrating their industry, but I also think that the majority of viewers don't care. And I'm not sure how you fix that, especially for the younger generation.

Paff

That's actually a helluva point that I hadn't considered. There was a time when movie stars NEVER did anything with television, then you couple that with no Access Hollywood or TMZ or shit like that. You saw your favorite stars at the movies, you might see them on Johnny Carson, so when they're all together in one telecast you sure as hell were tuning in.

I don't think politics is as much the ratings killer as people want to believe it is, otherwise late night TV would be a ghost town and instead it's booming.

But you can't overlook the fact that the Oscars are a three hour celebration of movies most of the audience hasn't seen. It really is that simple. Why would they watch? That said, I don't agree with this new category as all it is is throwing crumbs to the "regular" audience and cheapening the value of the awards themselves. So if it's two hours and 55 minutes dedicated to films that most viewers don't like combined with a 5 minute bone to the "popular" films, they still won't watch.

Like I said earlier though, people do need to watch better films. Fett, you and me are just snobs. I'm cool with it.

Dan

What they need to do is live stream the entire thing on Twitch, hosted by a couple of top gamer bros and Trainwrecks providing live commentary throughout. The live chat will have giveaways to the highest donors, and there can be custom Oscars emotes. Oh, and those who don't want to watch but just want the juicy details can check out the comments on the LivestreamFails subreddit.

I like this new awards category because it's basically an answer to "How do we acknowledge Disney's desire for MCU movies to get even more publicity and money while still pretending to be a classy event?"

Sonny Corinthos

I have to agree with that statement. Now, with social media, you see them 24/7. Want to see what Hollywood's biggest stars had for dinner, go to Instagram, Twitter or Facebook to find out. Could you imagine Humphrey Bogart or John Wayne tweeting about what they had to eat last night?

Mabuse

Yes, that’s what I suggested. How perceptive you are.