Is moving the Oscars to January a good idea?
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As my colleague John Horn reported earlier this week, the film academy is putting into motion a plan for 2012 to move the Super Bowl of movies from the end of February to earlier in the month, or even into late January. This comes as the actual Super Bowl prepares to go in the other direction and move later in the winter. The NFL has high hopes of adding two games to its regular-season schedule, and although its machinations probably will include the removal of a couple of pre-season games, it’s all but assured that the expansion of the regular season would push the Super Bowl deeper into February.
If both the NFL and the academy get their way, then, the Oscars would be placed squarely in the path of one of the NFL’s playoff weekends -- a clear ratings pitfall for any broadly targeted show. In a best-case scenario, the Oscars could slip in to the off weekend between the NFL championship games and the Super Bowl. But this option isn’t risk-free either since it means the weeklong pre-Oscar hype could be overshadowed at least a little by early Super Bowl hype. (The Oscars also could move from a Sunday telecast to a weekday slot, but that’s a whole other can of worms.)
There are numerous entities that would be hurt or helped by a compressed awards-season schedule (publications that rely on Oscar advertising would probably be hurt; festivals that serve as awards-season platforms, such as Toronto and Telluride, would probably be helped). And there’s little doubt that those who work on exhausting awards campaigns would appreciate having a few weeks lopped off that schedule.
For viewers, the effects are less clear. The academy’s goal with the scheduling change is to shorten the season so that there’s less fatigue by the time the big show rolls around. ‘Academy officials worry that the television audience, along with the nominees, are burned out by the time the Oscars are presented two months after the very last eligible films are released,’ Horn writes. So the answer is to move the Oscars, which in turn would no doubt make the the SAG Awards, Golden Globes and other shows that already come in quick succession in January move up and scrunch the schedule further, creating a timeline in which there’s a show or even two every weekend at the start of the year (unless any of them want to wander into holiday season, which is unlikely).
It’s an intriguing idea. But there’s little evidence that creating this kind of U.S. Open-like series actually will generate excitement for the final event. The awards-season calendar has historically been diffuse and sustained interest even when it went late into March. If anything, a little bit of breathing room actually seems to help ratings. Last year’s show, pushed back to March 7 to avoid Winter Olympics conflicts, was the highest-rated in five years.
The academy and other awards bodies are worried about seasonal burnout. It’s a more than valid concern. But giving us the same amount of awards in a shorter, more intense period of time might not be the best cure.
--Steven Zeitchik
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