Oscars: Desperate and Ratings-Hungry Academy Introduces Fan-Voted Audience Award

Well, it had to happen.

The Academy announced today that Twitter users will get to vote on their favorite films of 2021 — regardless of whether the film was nominated for an Oscar. The film that receives the most fan votes will be recognized during the ceremony. Call it the Oscar-equivalent of a People’s Choice Award. Yikes.

I feel like we are inching ever so close to the misbegotten Best Popular Film category making a comeback in 2023. Of course, you can’t blame the Academy for being desperate for ratings. You might also be asking yourselves, is this another way for them to acknowledge the success of “Spider-Man: No Way Home”? You bet. It’s 2008 all over again, but instead of expanding the Best Picture nominees to ten, they are letting Twitter users get in on the action.

Of course, if the Oscars actually wanted to improve their ratings, then they wouldn’t have chosen Regina Hall, Wanda Sykes and Amy Schumer to host. I’m guessing a lot of celebrities turned down emcee duties because if the best you can come up with are these three ladies …

Fact of the matter is that the Oscars have been in a downward spiral for, at least, a decade now. Last year’s ceremony attracted an average audience of 9.8 million viewers, making them the least-watched in the show's storied history.

Here’s ratings data that I like to call “Anatomy of a freefall”:

1998: 55.2 million
2002: 41.7 million
2006: 38.9 million
2009: 36.3 million
2016: 34.4 million
2018: 26.5 million
2020: 23.6 million
2021: 9.85 million

As you can see, the Academy and ABC have a major problem on their hands. Even if you don’t count last year’s pandemic-set, and very strange, Soderbergh-directed ceremony, Oscar ratings have been consistently plummeting on an almost yearly basis.

Now, do you really think there will be a massive audience tuning in to this coming March’s ceremony just to watch Hall, Schumer and Sykes cracking jokes or to see if mega-blockbusters such as “Belfast” and “Drive My Car” can upset frontrunner “The Power of the Dog”? Of course not. The Academy has a major problem on their hands, something that a People’s Choice category will not be able to solve: populist relevance.