Despite lukewarm critical reception (did you read Deadline’s own live-snarking?), the ratings for the Academy Awards has ABC crowing. The telecast drew an average audience of 41.3 million viewers, which made the Oscars TV‘s most watched entertainment broadcast since 2005, according to Nielsen estimates. The awards show apparently wasn’t hurt by the game of chicken that Disney played with Cablevision, one that forced millions of New Yorkers to miss the starting 17 minutes and more of the telecast. (Not to worry: they missed bupkis.) This marks the 2nd year in a row that the Oscars saw a ratings surge. The show was 14% up over the 2009 Oscars, which drew 35.3 million viewers when Slumdog Millionaire won Best Picture. That show ranked 13% above the 32 million viewers who watched No Country For Old Men win in 2008 — the lowest rated since Nielsen started measuring the broadcast. Look, the only place this year’s telecast could go was up. Especially with a global blockbuster like Avatar competing against Hurt Locker down to the wire for Best Picture.
The 2010 Oscar ratings continues an overall surge in awards show eyeballs: the Grammy Awards were up 35%, the Golden Globes were up 14.3%, and the People’s Choice Awards were up 15%.
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But Tom Sherak should wait to pat himself on the back. The production and direction of last night’s Academy Awards were heavily criticized if not downright ridiculed. For instance, the emphasis by executive producers Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic on packing in young presenters as a ploy to lower the average age of the audience demographics to what advertisers most prize didn’t pay off. The 18-34 demo was down 3%, while 34-49 was up 9%. Translation: Taylor Lautner, Zac Efron, Miley Cyrus, and Kristen Stewart in don’t-blink-or-you-miss-them doses weren’t enough. (The Grammys are the exception, but there artists like Beyonce, Lady Gaga and the Black Eyed Peas take the stage and perform.) Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart instead got stuck in an awkward tribute to the horror genre, which Twilight isn’t. That wasn’t the most serious gaffe. After Lautner mentioned that the last horror film to be recognized by the Oscars was 1973’s The Exorcist, the montage that followed featured a memorable shot of Anthony Hopkins in a Hannibal Lecter mask. Because 1991’s Silence of the Lambs, of course, won Best Picture.
What a shame! To turn the only great Hollywood shinding left into a dull, lifeless yawn full of faults. It’s the worst direction I’ve ever seen – and this from the film capital of the world in a show honoring the best of the medium itself! Unbelievable! What no one has mentioned are several shots of people in the audience moving towards (or away from) their seats. I can’t remember ever to have seen that on an Oscar telecast – isn’t that just what have been avoided revealing all these years? And now it doesn’t matter anymore? That too helped the whole thing looking like a matter-of-factly boring get-together where a bunch of people are “forced” to sit for too long and whatch something that just is not entertaining enough. Which it just what it was…
This year’s director has really managed to ruin the Oscars and making sure there’ll be a big drop in viewers next year no matter how good it’ll be then.
Bring back Crystal and someone who knows how to write and direct!
Hey – anyone wants to direct the Oscars? It can’t be worse than this!
Truly the worst directed live show of the past several decades. Was that John Travolta doing a Best Picture into? Or some stage hand in a tux? And the In Memoriam section? Patrick Swayze deserved better than some blurred, distant projection shot on a screen half an auditorium away.
Whoever the director was, he/she should never be allowed inside a control room again.
And one other Razzie: Lose the mawkish tributes of actors standing on stage spewing Hollywood love at grimacing nominees
And the winner of “worst-director-ever variety-special”? Whomever that guy was. He’ll never work in this (or any other town) again!
That said, I thought Steve and Alex rocked the house! Off-beat, edgy and funny material that they executed flawlessly. For a couple of old guys, they really proved what’s possible with an Oscar show not afraid to take some creative chances. Nice work guys!
Matthew Robillard
That would be Hamish Hamilton, who has also done the MTV VMAs and the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.
Thankfully, the 2011 Oscars will once again be directed by an AMERICAN: Don Mischer; he and Bruce Cohen are also producing the show.
What we’re seeing here is the dying gasp of production expertise for live TV except for sports events. The Oscarcast, unlike other event shows, is the one where the director can’t go back in and do pickups. It’s formatted and has a shot list, so there is no excuse to blow it. When are the producers going to learn that they need to stage the show for the cameras, not for the theatre audience? (Granted, the Kodak Theatre is a nightmare). But jeez: having world-recognizable stars stand on a thrust platform in mid-theatre and not go in for closeups? An iso-cam on hands opening an envelope? Designing a set with stairs nobody can walk down gracefully, a backdrop that looks like venetian blind slats, and what’s with all the lampshades? The show was as spontaneous as a glacier; was everything so tightly scripted that no one dared ad-lib?
Having young actors mixed in with established stars as presenters is useless unless, first, the public knows about it ahead of time so they can tune in and, second, they are given enough to do at the podium. They are the future of the industry and yet all we know about them at Oscar time is that they clean up real good. Their almost complete lack of stage presence, however, is not a good sign. F’r’Chrissake, it’s the Oscars, not a high school play.
The Oscars are about cinematic vision and personal achievement, and it would be nice if the presentation ceremony reflected this and not become an exercise in ass-kissing. If the world’s leading provider of entertainment (Hollywood) can’t create a TV spectacular that people will watch, they should give up and go back to a quiet dinner in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel where the winners are known in advance.
The musical direction was downright creepy. Playing “Thank Heaven For Little Girls” for Zoe Saldana and Carey Mulligan’s entrance felt all sorts of wrong. And most egregious was playing “I Am Woman” when Kathryn Bigelow was left the stage. How insulting. And what was even stupider was that they continued to play the song while Tom Hanks came out on to the stage.
Only Hollywood could make music cues so sexist and patronizing.