Too much of a good thing?
Here’s a bit of sage advice on where to trim the big show.
The annual litany of complaints about the length of the Oscar ceremony (averaging 31⁄2 hours in recent years) spurred the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to consider presenting four awards categories this year during commercial breaks. The uproar was fast and furious, and all 24 awards will once again be televised live. But how efficient would it actually have been to present cinematography, editing, live action short, and makeup and hairstyling in edited clips? The Times studied 10 years’ worth of recent Oscars shows — the last nine, plus the last no-host year, 1989 — to see.
The show’s ratings have trended down the last five years as telecast length has increased, but length and viewership aren’t directly correlated. The 2013 edition was 3 hours, 35 minutes — 22 minutes longer than 2012 — and increased viewership, to 40.4 million. And the 2014 ceremony gained more than 3.5 million viewers over 2013. It was one minute shorter.
By far the largest non-awards time block is commercials and promos. During the years examined, that averaged around 40 minutes per telecast. No one’s telling ABC to sell fewer ads (… unless they sold fewer ads at a higher premium?), but we’re talking about giving out 24 awards, plus some special honors and an In Memorium montage, and still squeezing in a little entertainment in about 2 hours, 20 minutes for a three-hour show.
Together, the winners of those previously four targeted races have averaged 5 minutes, 11 seconds from the moment they were announced to the end of their speeches. The academy’s plan to show them as edited speeches showcasing the “emotionally resonant” moments would have saved about three minutes.
One area to consider is the time winners take to get from their seats to the stage. Including all 24 categories, as an average over those 10 years, that takes nearly 12 minutes per show. If the academy moved nominees to an area backstage before the winner is announced, that would likely save more than six minutes, and we’d still get the happy hugging shots with their loved ones during the copious outros and promos in every telecast (about eight minutes, on average). To be sure, it could be a Hollywood holding area, with soft lighting and Evian and mints.
Some years have had more nonnominee montages and musical interludes than others, but the average over that time has been nearly 20 minutes per show. Simply eliminating filmed tributes to previous acting winners and the four “inspiration”-themed clips packages would have saved the 2017 show more than 11 minutes.
The infamous, no-host barbarism of the 1989 show clocked in officially at 3 hours, 19 minutes, but at what cost? The speeches (in only 22 categories, as animated feature wasn’t yet an award and one winner wasn’t present) were lightningfast. Five were under 30 seconds. But the national nightmare known as the “Snow White Opening Number” was just one of the detours to Hades the show took. Others included an “Oscar Winners of Tomorrow” song-and-dance number and a tribute to tap dancing. Nonawards-related total: right around 54 minutes of air time. Yep, nearly a third of the show.
Going hostless could drastically reduce the more than 30 minutes averaged by “host business” over this period. But it could also drastically reduce the entertainment value. Hosts have yielded some of the show’s best moments — the good monologues (Billy Crystal), the Ellen selfie and Jimmy Kimmel’s Mean Tweets. Removing them altogether would yield a straight-ahead, awardscentric proceeding with considerably less wacky brio, but then what would you have? The BAFTAs? Still, eliminating just half the host “bits” (Kimmel’s tour bus guests, say) from the show could easily yield an additional five minutes.
So there you go: Reduce the bits (five minutes), cut the non-nominee montages and production numbers (about 20 minutes), and move the nominees backstage before their category is announced (about six minutes) … you just turned a 3-hour, 30-minute boondoggle into a sleek three-hour machine, and that includes all winners being televised. You’re welcome, academy. Times staff writers Makeda Easter and Sonaiya Kelley contributed to this report.