Awards Want It Long & Hard
There is nothing that The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences would like better these days than a shorter Oscar show. The ratings slip a little most years and the sense is that a shorter show would be a more popular show and a more popular show would keep The Academy rich, fat, generous, and happy.
But what do you cut?
The Television Academy faced this issue and got tough about it. They made the call. Shorter show… some awards presented before the telecast and acceptance highlights to run during the big show.
BZZZZT!!!
Not so fast, buckaroos! Winning awards on national TV is our entitlement and we’re going to fry your asses if you try to minimize that in any way! TV Land Prime here we come!
Okay… perhaps that is pushing it a little far. But what are the awards givers going to say when the answer comes back from the networks on the next contract or the one after that and the nets just say, “2.5 hours and you are off the air”?
As the Super Bowl shows, if they can sell those ads, the networks will whore out untold numbers of hours of television space to that end. This last year, NBC, Fox and ESPN all did two hours of pre-show before NBC took the game… with 20 minutes for show before the kick-off.
The Academies are going in the opposite direction.
I respect that this is a big moment in people’s lives and that all the different talent that do great work feel they are due their respect. But as I understood it, this plan by ATAS was to split “the pain” amongst all the disciplines being celebrated. No one has, to my knowledge, ever brought that generous notion up at AMPAS. It’s always been about the less-pop branches defending their turf.
Someone’s eventually going to have to step up, act like adults, and be less celebrated in the name of keeping the entire organization healthily funded. Maybe next year…
The actors presumably draw the audience but they’re showered with attention 365 days a year. Give the fucking sound guy his moment in the sun.
And of course, some of the very best speeches and moments come from the “little people.” Last year’s show was just about three hours, right? Who cares?
This is one of those classic situations when no one cares… until the TV contract goes away or gets cut in half and the entire show ends up on cable.
And interestingly, neither of you seems to get that the ATAS plan was to actually balance the “big people” and the “little people” between the live and pre-tape… unlike The Tonys or the Academy tech awards, etc.
Maybe it doesn’t matter to you if ATAS and AMPTP have their annual budgets cut in half. If not, great. If you think that might matter, you might want to pull your heads out of the dirt. Big awards show have no more god given right to ratings and massive contracts than newspapers do to be the exclusive delivery mode of news. Things change. Those who don’t adjust get ran over.
I don’t think a shorter Oscar show is the answer. They need to find a better balance between the money categories and the lesser ones.
This year’s awards went in this order:
Best Supporting Actress
Best Original Screenplay
Best Adapted Screenplay
Best Animated Short Film
Best Animated Feature
Best Art Direction
Best Costume Design
Best Makeup
Best Cinematography
Best Supporting Actor
Best Documentary Feature
Best Documentary Short Subject
Best Live Action Short Film
Best Sound Editing
Best Sound Mixing
Best Film Editing
Best Visual Effects
Best Original Score
Best Original Song
Best Foreign Language Film
Best Director
Best Actress
Best Actor
Best Picture
There’s got to be a better order to balance everything out.
Split up the presentation of the screenplay awards, the music awards, the animation awards and the documentary awards.
Move the Best Animated Feature closer to the end of the night, to help build its importance in the minds of moviegoers.
End the canned and cutesy comedy routines and the emotionless explanations of the lesser categories and get the stars to speak from the heart about the importance of the category. You know, like what happened this year with the Acting categories. That was fucking brilliant, and I hope it not only becomes a regular happening but added to more categories like director.
And let the damn musicians play their songs to the fullest… unless it’s a Peter Gabriel song, then make it cut it down to four minutes. Most of the second half is just going to be repeats of the main motifs of the song anyway.
Oh… and the Academy needs to start issuing yearly DVD/Blu-rays of the ceremony. Snippets on YouTube are not enough.
Now, I’ve never once watched the Emmys and I rarely watched more than a bit of the Grammys. There are just too many damn awards given out by these groups. If there were just 24 Emmy or Grammy categories, like the Oscars, then this wouldn’t be as much of a problem. But when you have *100* awards, as this year’s Emmys will, or *110*, as this year’s Grammy’s did, then everyone is going to have to make some concessions.
Fuck pre-tape. And again, the drama comes from live reaction. That’s part of the show’s pleasures.
But again, David, you always come down on the side of the bean counters. Not sure why.
First, you’re just wrong about that bean-counters bullshit, Christian. Lazy and simplistic.
And what bean counters do you think I am rolling with here? Do you even know what position you are trying to take, aside from “what I want is all that matters?”
It’s great that you want what you want, but the problem is not imagined. Do you have any solution other than “fuck the bean counters?” Or are you one of those people who just wants to complain?
Are you are spending your evenings at town hall meetings screaming about how America is being turned into s commie stinkhole and how health care reform with kill your grandma? Cause that’s the attitude.
Reasonable people can have different opinions about how to change the healthcare system, but only dopes think it’s just fine and will fix itself if we just stay the course.
FWIW, Ed, there are normally 28 Emmy Awards in the primetime telecast.
Sure, it’s slightly more than the “24” of the Oscars you cite, but certainly not “100.”
Two-thirds of the Emmy Awards are given out in a “Creative Arts” ceremony the week before.
I’m somebody who can generally live w/out award shows. Maybe I’ll flick on to see the opening or peek in from time to time over the course of the evening. I’m more apt to watch the Oscars since I might have a few bucks invested in a pool somewhere. Not sure how much the networks or issuing branches are gunning for me but trying to neatly package an award show in two hours or so will feel canned and I won’t watch at all. I can’t think of anything less appealing than watching a pre-recorded acceptance speech, regardless if it happened just 2 hours before. It’s yesterday’s news.
Now if ABC or NBC wants to string together a string of America’s Best Foot-in-mouth Acceptance Speeches featuring all those people in middle management who’ve wandered in from the Ramada Inn bar to pick up a little trophy as appeasement for having their dept’s budget slashed, positions cut, being over worked, traveled about and marginally sub-cost-of-living increased, get up on stage to tell the board members who rarely even set foot in the corp office because they’re too busy flying around the precious G-4, to go F- themselves speeches taken from wobbly video cameras from across the country, then sure, yeah, I’d wait for that w/greater anticipation each year than the Darwin Awards hitting my inbox. But to me taped Hllywd awards seems about as cute and pretentious as 2 hours of looking at someone’s baby pictures w/47 shots of the same back drop and outfit and indistinguishable facial variances. I don’t know how long it’d be before I check out.
One thing about Emmys is there seem to be a lot of reach around love for big name talent in supporting or guest starring roles. In like a lot of categories. It’s like some freakish clairvoyant who totally made an episode of the X-Files would never get her props but some dinosaur, albeit legend, comes on to play the meddling mom to popular sit-com star, can schedule her Vera Wang fitting the moment she steps off the soundstage.
I don’t know how you make it shorter w/out compromising the ent value of the show. Order is boring. I don’t know if I need to see the host intro the special guest who announces the nominees and winner. But how much does that shave?? Take out all the song and dance and then it just becomes a treadmill of awardees that’ll resemble banquet night at little league. Maybe it’s just me but I’d wonder how pre-fab they can condense an award show before people won’t just say screw it and look for the results on the web and be done w/it? Anyone’s dress’ too short? Someone drop the F bomb? No? OK, send me the link or call me next year.
“Are you are spending your evenings at town hall meetings screaming about how America is being turned into s commie stinkhole and how health care reform with kill your grandma? Cause that’s the attitude.”
Uh, no it’s not. Not at all. There was no rant, just a sentence about why you seem to demand somebody gets cut out instead of just structuring the show different. What’s with the bizarro exaggerated comparison to the armed townhall healthcare morons? Don’t go all Wells here.
Christian… seriously… they have all tried to shorted the thing up in many different ways. 4 minutes each for 28 awards is 1:52 before commercials. 12 minutes an hour (minimally) for spots and you’re at 2:16 without an ounce of fat… no monologue, no tributes, no extras.
I’m not pro-bean counter, but I can count beans in my head… no calculator.
It’s a real challenge.
Were they really doing this in an attempt to make the show shorter, though? Everything I read about the plan seemed to indicate that they were going to use the extra time to do a bunch of montages and comedy bits, so the ceremony would’ve been just as long.
Anyway, when I first read about this plan, I didn’t particularly like it, but I wasn’t really all that outraged either – although I do think Generation Kill was one the best things from the past year of TV/Film and thought it a shame that all its major categories were downgraded. That said, the Emmy people did a horrible job of defending the decision, basically complaining about how the nominated shows aren’t more popular. At a time when deftness was required, they were sorely lacking.
Here’s what I’m sure David will consider to be a stupid question but I’ll ask it anyway because that’s what I do –
What’s the downside to ATAS and AMPTP getting their annual budgets cut in half? I can imagine that ATAS funds a certain number of restoration projects and obviously they sponsor things to do with documentaries and student films…but what else? Would the Governor’s Ball have to happen in a parking lot? Would the statues have to be made of higher nickel content?
I’m honestly curious.
it seems they’ve tried the ‘tightening’ thing to no avail – they can’t seem to make the damn ceremony shorter to save their lives – so why don’t they just say ‘fuck it’ and go the whole hog and do all the awards together even the creative arts stuff and make it like a day-long event, like an NFL game where you can just wander in and out all thru the day and it’s still plodding along towards ‘best picture’
Just Twitter the winners.
Former ATAS president Todd Leavitt weighs in: http://www.thewrap.com/article/exclusive-12-key-facts-tempest-todd-leavitt_5166?page=1