90 minutes of Oscars red carpet? Really?

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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Tuesday that Charlie Haykel and Juliane Hare will executive produce a 90-minute -- extended from the traditional 30 minutes -- ‘Oscars Red Carpet Live’ show for ABC. The additional hour is surely a response to other networks -- such as E! Entertainment and TV Guide Channel -- winning ratings for their extensive red carpet coverage of the Oscars.

But really? Is this what the academy should be doing? Seems like at one point they wanted to make it more about the show and less about the circus that surrounds it, primarily who’s wearing what and what jewelry they borrowed for the big night. I get that people are watching the pre-show anyway so they might as well take advantage of the ratings boost, but it was nice to have a brief 30 minute pre-show officially sponsored by the academy before the actual show rolled out. With an hour and a half of arrival footage, it’s surely going to be more challenging to maintain the quality.

Say the producers in a statement, ‘In addition to having more time to talk to the biggest movie stars in the world, we’ll be able to take viewers behind the scenes before the biggest event in entertainment.’ It will be interesting to see if they actually get some real access. It’s hard enough to get the presenters to the night. Do they really want to do pre-game shtick too?

-- Nicole Sperling