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Academy Awards Adds "Popular Film" Category, Will Shorten TV Broadcast by Cutting Out Some Awards

Accepted submission by takyon at 2018-08-08 17:52:34 from the shark-jumping-awards dept.
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Academy Adds Popular Film Oscar Category in Desperate Ratings Move [indiewire.com]

At the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Board of Governors meeting on Tuesday night, the 54 governors voted to add a new category to the Oscars. Per tradition, some 7,000 Academy voters, experts in their field, voted in by their colleagues, will weigh in on the best films of the year in 24 categories covering the crafts of moviemaking, from cinematography to sound, as well as the four acting categories, directing, writing, animation, foreign language, documentary, and fiction shorts and features.

But this year there will be one more: Best Popular Film. The Academy is bowing to pressure from ABC, which is anxious about historic low ratings [indiewire.com] for its telecast. The next Oscars will air on February 24, 2019 and, in 2020, will move up from February 23 to February 9, the earliest date ever, in a bid to jump ahead of multiple rival awards shows–which will, in turn, move ahead of the Oscars. (In the early days of its history [wikipedia.org], the Oscars were held in May, moved to April and March, then February.)

The Board also finally succumbed to building pressure to keep the show to three hours and not present live some of the less sexy craft categories, following the lead of other awards shows like the Tonys. (Sexy categories like Sound Mixing and Editing will be presented live during commercial breaks, then edited into the show.) This also serves to undermine the integrity of these annual global awards, which may be losing relevance as a mainstream shared event, but are still revered by cinephiles around the world.

Also at Vanity Fair [vanityfair.com], Vulture [vulture.com], Slate [slate.com], Variety [variety.com], and Collider [collider.com].

See also: Oscars Slammed by Film Journalists for Creating 'Best Popular Film' Category, Especially in the Year of 'Black Panther' [indiewire.com]


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