I hate this line. I have a whole bunch of family who (having not seen Barbie but having seen headlines relating to Barbie) rant about it being political. But wait, earlier in the same article the...
To veer into divisive politics and social sermonettes would be a turn-off: Many or most of the missing 14 million would disappear again at the six-minute mark
I hate this line. I have a whole bunch of family who (having not seen Barbie but having seen headlines relating to Barbie) rant about it being political. But wait, earlier in the same article the author praised Barbie and Oppenheimer for dragging people back to the cinema.
The whole article seems like it is asking for people to appeal to the least common denominator to try to make a great movie. The problem is that least common denominator movies are bland and forgetful.
Some statements the author made in the article seemed questionable to me. I looked this up and Oscar viewership has been steadily declining. The Chicago example doesn't work because that year...
Some statements the author made in the article seemed questionable to me.
Oscar viewers can regenerate with surprising speed, as happened in 2004, when 43.5 million tuned in to see The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King win Best Picture, just one year after Chicago had reduced the audience to a worrisome low of 33 million
I looked this up and Oscar viewership has been steadily declining. The Chicago example doesn't work because that year seems to be an anomaly, with viewership three years before all being in the 40s and roughly in the same range after that. I don't know what the cultural context was around it, but given there was also another Lord of the Rings movie nominated in the Chicago year, I don't know what the author is trying to say.
Because I couldn't help it, I also looked up the numbers for all the years since then. According to the Neilsen ratings, viewership used to oscillate between the 30-40 million range in the early 2010s, hitting a peak at 43 million in 2014 and it's been below 35 since 2016. It hit an all-time low with 10.4 million in 2021 and it was 16.62 in 2022 and 18.75 million this year. I will concede that it might receive a slight bump if popular movies are competing but it's hard to see Oscars being anywhere as viewed as they used to be.
More, enthusiasm among cinephiles is already up: Advance ticket sales for the New York Film Festival have been booming.
I don't think that implies people are interested in watching a long awards ceremony. I would rather assume that it implies people want to watch simply better movies which is why there's a greater interest in film festivals. Speaking for myself, most of the movies this year that got wide releases I haven't been interested in but I'd watch some of the film festival movies if I got the chance.
And still more, we’ve learned from some recent bond disclosure filings by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that the current Oscar audience isn’t—or needn’t be—quite as small as it looks. While only 18 million-plus watched the show earlier this year, 31.8 million “unique viewers” tuned in for at least six minutes. In other words, almost 14 million people sampled the 2024 program and decided it wasn’t for them.
I think the takeaway from this is that the number of people interested in watching long award shows has gone down and six minutes might be about as much attention you can expect from an average viewer.
There doesn't appear to be a huge correlation between a good movie year and how many people watches the Oscars. I remember in the 90s and early 00s that the "magic" of the Oscar show was mostly...
There doesn't appear to be a huge correlation between a good movie year and how many people watches the Oscars. I remember in the 90s and early 00s that the "magic" of the Oscar show was mostly just when we could see all the Hollywood stars and that in itself has a certain glamour. In recent decades, the whole concept of a movie star has somewhat dwindled. Actor names don't sell movies by themselves like they used too. And with social media and countless tv appearances, if we want to see the actors outside their roles, there are plenty of opportunities to do so. The Oscar show doesn't provide anything new or interesting since the whole "star power glamour" is almost gone from the industry.
I hate this line. I have a whole bunch of family who (having not seen Barbie but having seen headlines relating to Barbie) rant about it being political. But wait, earlier in the same article the author praised Barbie and Oppenheimer for dragging people back to the cinema.
The whole article seems like it is asking for people to appeal to the least common denominator to try to make a great movie. The problem is that least common denominator movies are bland and forgetful.
Some statements the author made in the article seemed questionable to me.
I looked this up and Oscar viewership has been steadily declining. The Chicago example doesn't work because that year seems to be an anomaly, with viewership three years before all being in the 40s and roughly in the same range after that. I don't know what the cultural context was around it, but given there was also another Lord of the Rings movie nominated in the Chicago year, I don't know what the author is trying to say.
Because I couldn't help it, I also looked up the numbers for all the years since then. According to the Neilsen ratings, viewership used to oscillate between the 30-40 million range in the early 2010s, hitting a peak at 43 million in 2014 and it's been below 35 since 2016. It hit an all-time low with 10.4 million in 2021 and it was 16.62 in 2022 and 18.75 million this year. I will concede that it might receive a slight bump if popular movies are competing but it's hard to see Oscars being anywhere as viewed as they used to be.
I don't think that implies people are interested in watching a long awards ceremony. I would rather assume that it implies people want to watch simply better movies which is why there's a greater interest in film festivals. Speaking for myself, most of the movies this year that got wide releases I haven't been interested in but I'd watch some of the film festival movies if I got the chance.
I think the takeaway from this is that the number of people interested in watching long award shows has gone down and six minutes might be about as much attention you can expect from an average viewer.
There doesn't appear to be a huge correlation between a good movie year and how many people watches the Oscars. I remember in the 90s and early 00s that the "magic" of the Oscar show was mostly just when we could see all the Hollywood stars and that in itself has a certain glamour. In recent decades, the whole concept of a movie star has somewhat dwindled. Actor names don't sell movies by themselves like they used too. And with social media and countless tv appearances, if we want to see the actors outside their roles, there are plenty of opportunities to do so. The Oscar show doesn't provide anything new or interesting since the whole "star power glamour" is almost gone from the industry.