Hollywood's most powerful citizen has more people fawning over him than a studio boss or a marquee movie star. A nod from him can bump a movie's earnings into the stratosphere as effectively as anything the marketing team at Warner could dream up. He gets obscure actors more roles than super agent Mike Ovitz could in his heyday and his 'bling' is a more coveted status symbol than Harry Winston's. When he throws a party they come. Since his birth in 1929 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, he has been the yardstick of by which the industry measures excellence and winning him is the pinnacle of a career in Hollywood. Oscar became an octogenarian this year and held his annual celebration, the Academy Awards featuring its traditional red carpet parade of screen idols dripping in diamonds and couture last Sunday. But the audience didn't show up.
After 80 years could the perfectly proportioned 13.5 inch golden man be finally showing his age? Sunday's 3 hour awards ceremony had the lowest ratings since the current ratings system began in 1974, with only 32 million viewers in the US according to Nielsen Media Research. That is a 20% drop from last year's 40 million and even lower than the previous record of 2003 when the show was held on the eve of the Iraq invasion. The household rating, 18.7, also marks the lowest level by that measure going all the way back to the first televised Oscars in 1953. Along with the Super Bowl the Oscars used to inhabit a rarified plane as the only perennial telecasts that could virtually guarantee large viewership. But this year's audience totaled less than a third of the 97.5 million who watched the Super Bowl on Fox earlier this month - a record for a sporting event and the second highest audience in US television history. And the ABC Oscar broadcast was beaten by American Idol, the Fox ratings bonanza that had a high of 33.3 million so far this season and averages 30 million viewers each week in its Tuesday night slot.
The Oscars are a profitable industry that gives the 6,500 strong member Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences roughly $40 million in net income each year. The ceremony itself is one of the most watched and- for advertisers at least- most expensive programs on TV. ABC was asking as much as $1.82 million for a 30-second commercial spot, a 7% jump over last year's top price but, despite the steep cost, many big name advertisers like American Express, Coca-Cola, General Motors and Unilever bought ads. All marketers' eyes were watching to take the pulse of broadcast TV since this was the first big network event to air since the conclusion of the WGA strike. The awards telecast shed a full quarter of its 18-49 demographic compared with last year, this is the group most coveted by TV execs because they attract big money buys from advertisers. ABC honchos who are more accustomed to bragging about their Oscar numbers lowered the bar this year by comparing it to the performance of CBS' Grammy Awards (17.2 million) and NBC's Golden Globes (6 million) both of which were casualties of the long writers strike. In that sad context even the Oscars looked ok.
The uncertainty and the aftermath of the strike left the show's producers less than two weeks to put together a broadcast. Resolving the strike just in time for the Oscars may not have been such a good an idea in retrospect because the rushed feel was evident. But having short prep time need not necessarily be a bad thing. Best case scenario would have been a show punctuated by spontaneity, improvisation and refreshing 'oops' moments like jokes that have not been endlessly rewritten or performers forgetting and adlibbing steps. This would have been a welcome injection of freshness and humor into a usually too polished affair. Instead we got a cobbled together structure of disparate, uninspired elements like a house built for shelter but not for comfort. Coming on the heels of the strike the show relied too heavily on endless clips and montages of past ceremonies rather than on creating new memorable moments. Winners were ushered off stage at such a fast clip that host Jon Stewart was moved to bring one back out after a commercial break when she had been denied the chance to give an acceptance speech.
It could have been the aftermath of the strike that darkened the mood, or maybe it was the subject matter. There is a high correlation between the box-office popularity of films nominated for best picture and television viewership for the Academy Awards. When small independents dominate the audience tends to dwindle. This year's big contenders included smaller films such as 'Juno,' 'There Will Be Blood,' 'No Country for Old Men,' 'Michael Clayton,' and 'Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,' most of which generated little box office or buzz among moviegoers despite being critical darlings. The slate of decidedly somber, serious films failed to click and they proved a turnoff to viewers, a lot of whom who had never seen the titles nominated. When popular movies which performed well at the box office, like 'Titanic' and 'The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,' are in contention the odds are the ceremony's viewership is higher.
This year's best picture category nominees were violent stories; one about a mad ruthless oil man and the other a psychopathic cattle gun wielding killer with a pageboy haircut. The third nomination was a morality tale about immoral lawyers, the fourth a period piece featuring war, lies and betrayal and the only funny entry 'Juno' is a teen pregnancy comedy about a mother planning to give up her baby. Heavy, brooding and with the exception of the last, not exactly crowd pleasers. Of the five only 'Juno' managed to break the $100 million mark. Eventual best picture winner, the violent Carter era drama 'No Country for Old Men' directed by brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, only grossed $64 million domestically. Thanks to 'Juno' and its $130 million in ticket sales, the five best-picture nominees together have grossed $327 million. $111 million of that came after the academy nominations were announced, and it's still far short of the total from a decade earlier. The highest rated Oscar broadcast ever was in 1998 when the box-office blockbuster 'Titanic', the biggest grossing movie of all time with a box office take of $1.85 billion, sunk the competition with a record-tying 11 awards, including the best picture. The audience that year? Some 55.25 million odd Americans.
Another contributing factor may have been the so called 'foreign invasion'. The acting awards on Sunday were swept by non-American actors for the first time since 1965. All went to European thespians unknown to Middle American audiences and in films that relatively few movie goers saw. England's Daniel Day-Lewis in 'There Will be Blood' and Tilda Swinton in 'Michael Clayton' got best actor and supporting actress respectively. A killer role in 'No Country for Old Men' snagged Spain's Javier Bardem a supporting actor nod while France was represented by Marion Cotillard, winning Best Actress for her heart wrenching turn as chanteuse Edith Piaf in 'La Vie En Rose'. On an ironic note all except Cotillard were awarded for playing distinctly American archetypes (a greedy capitalist, a shifty lawyer, a lawless renegade). Even less illustrious categories like best song went to non-Hollywood entries; a song penned by an Irish and Czech couple for the movie 'Once' beat out all three nominees from Disney's 'Enchanted'. Supporting actress winner Tilda Swinton said later, while brandishing her golden statuette, 'Spain, France, England, we all served as a reminder that it was Europeans that invented Hollywood in the first place.' The Academy long accused of only recognizing only its own and being reluctant to venture beyond the borders of Tinsel Town disproved that this year by recognizing international achievement but it may have cost them something in the form of American viewership.