It’s no secret that ABC desperately needs good ratings for this coming March’s Oscars ceremony. The numbers have been terrible the last few years and last year’s decision to not air the tech category winners ended up backfiring.
EEAO superfan, and Academy President, Janet Yang gave a friendly warning to future Oscar winners at yesterday’s luncheon.
She’s under the impression that the reason why the Oscars ceremony has been lagging in recent years is because of the lengthy speeches. She is wrong. But first, here’s what she said to the nominees at yesterday’s Oscars luncheon:
“You win a coveted golden statue, your speech must be 45 seconds tops. We have worked really hard to represent all awards live on the show this year. So we need to be sensitive to our running time, you need to work with us. This is live television after all. Translation: keep it short, sweet and to the point please. And to be clear, that’s 45 second TOTAL. For instance, if an award is shared amongst a group, either one person speaks for the group or each person gets the opportunity to thank one person.
What Yang seems to be clueless about is that Oscar-winning speeches are part of the reason why people tune in. Most of the iconic speeches in Oscars history were well over 2 minutes. You won’t get many great moments if you just limit it to 45 seconds.
The winners deserve more than 45 seconds to give a speech. I understand Yang and ABC are in a ratings-hungry phase, but this is ridiculous. We're not tuning in to watch the unfunny host or painfully presented sketches.
With that being said, maybe we can also apply the 45-second rule to Jimmy Kimmel’s hosting duties?