Oscar 2008: Telecast Gets Lowest Ratings Ever
by Andre Soares
According to Oscar savants, experts, and know-it-alls everywhere, one TV-ratings point was lost per unfunny repartee at the 2008 Oscarcast. If so, the one between Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway was both long and unfunny enough to lose the show about 2 million viewers.
Blame it on the dark-themed films, the (relatively speaking) little-known nominees (in the US), the — until just a week ago — threat that the show wouldn’t go on because of the Writers Guild strike, the recent strike-related viewership slump in network TV, the proliferation of film award TV shows, the bad weather in Los Angeles, the Danish Film Critics’ Bodil Awards held on the same day, the evening’s fashion (Jennifer Garner, left), the iPhone, or the Oscarcast’s reputation for being long and ennui-inducing.
Or blame it on the ignorant masses whose idea of quality filmmaking is Meet the Spartans.
As per Nielsen Media Research, the 2008 Oscarcast hosted by Jon Stewart earned the lowest national household ratings ever (since 1953, when the show was first televised): 18.7.
With 32 million viewers in the US, it was also the least watched show since this sort of tallying began in 1974. The previous Oscar viewership nadir, the 2003 ceremony (which began right after the US-led invasion of Iraq), had 33 million viewers.
But considering that so many non-US personalities were nominated this year — all four acting winners were European — here’s wondering if the Oscars, much like a number of Hollywood movies of late, fared better with TV audiences elsewhere.
The most watched Oscar broadcast on record was in 1998, when Titanic won a record-tying 11 awards, including the best picture statuette. Approximately 55 million US viewers tuned in that year.
This year, only one movie among the five (critically praised) best picture nominees, Jason Reitman’s Juno, starring Ellen Page as a pregnant 15-year-old, has thus far crossed the US$100 million box-office mark in the US/Canada.
Still, those 32 million viewers are nothing to be sniffed at. As per a Reuters report, "the Academy Awards show ranks as the year’s highest-rated entertainment special and a cash cow for Walt Disney Co.’s ABC, which raked in an average of $1.8 million for each 30-second spot, up 7 percent from a year ago."
(As per ABC, the show had "a cumulative ‘reach’ of 64.1 million viewers, referring to the aggregate number of viewers who tuned in for at least six minutes." Source: The New York Times.)
Click on the images to enlarge them.
Photos: Darren Decker (Garner), Michael Yada (Carell). All photos: © A.M.P.A.S.
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People aren’t really interested in awards and awards shows in general these days. All of the films in the major categories could have been financially successful had the studios that released and or bought them felt the need to promote the films. The strike didn’t really factor in as much as the industry is pretending like it did, people just don’t really care all that much anymore.
It has gotten to the point that I find films because of IMDB and Amazon rather than actually seeing the trailers for films. And no one is really going to the movies anymore so why would anyone really want to watch a show about a bunch of films virtually no one outside of the entertainment community and the festival circuit saw.
It’s often said that studios pander to the masses but they can’t be doing that good a job as people are just plain not interested in what Hollywood has to offer. But that’s happening all over the entertainment industry.
The Motion Picture Academy is also to blame for the lack of variety in nominees. Even with categories like costume design, it was so predictable and boring that the big period piece won. Nothing fun like Fantastic Four or Enchanted. Always the period piece. The same goes for most of the other categories.
But primarily, I think the age of the 24 hour celebrity is turning people off of the entertainment industry in general. Nothing interesting about seeing movie stars or just plain old actors getting awards, we see them all the time: It’s boring, and the more people realize actors are real people the more boring the are. Even Pola Negri couldn’t manage to seem interesting to the public today, they’re just plain jaded.