Well, this does not come as a great surprise, to be honest:
The US television audience for the 78th Academy Awards was down by eight per cent compared with last year.
The ceremony, which saw Crash shock the favourite Brokeback Mountain by taking best film, was watched by 38.8m people, the third lowest audience in 20 years.
I do not know to what extent this decline has been caused by the decline in the number of adults watching movies, as has been reported in various parts, or the increasing refusal of ordinary people to sit watching preening showbiz types mouth platitudes while receiving their gongs. Probably some combination of the two, I think. The film industry is fracturing, partly I think because of technologies that mean you can watch great films in the comfort of home in tremendous quality. A friend of mine recently bought a high definition big screen television for just over one thousand pounds and the quality was magnificent. And there were no annoying chatty couples sitting behind me, bad air conditioning and annoying preliminary announcements and adverts.
I blame excesive drug taking and moonbat politics in Hollywood.
Hopefully next year this will be reflected in the coverage. I can’t visit a web site vaguely focused on news and current affairs at the moment without seeing generous coverage of it. Where are all these people who want to read in detail about film awards programmes? I’ve never met any of them.
Surely that’s in line with network TV audiences in general though?
Since I got broadband, a PS2 and a DVD player, my whole family hardly watches TV at all, and when I do it’s really odd stuff. I mean, why watch the Oscars when you can watch a dissertation about autogyro design on Discovery Wings? Eh?
Still have to pay the bleedin licence fee though…
Yeah, But hooray for Nick!
I’ll buy him a pint when he gets back.
I haven’t watched the Oscars in nearly 20 years…. which among my people (gay men) makes me almost as unacceptable as my political views. The moonbat politics and narcissistic preening of these intellectual lightweights was the final straw for me.
Richard Easbey, you might watch it for the frocks, you goof! They’re all designed by “your people”. As is the make-up … and the hair. The nails…
If your political views are that you’re conservative – frankly, sweetheart, I have never met a gay in my life who wasn’t deeply conservative. In my experience, gays are not radical. The esteemed Peter Thatchell, yes. But normally (if you’ll forgive the word) no. Gay men are conservative souls.
Verity,
Nice to see your claws are as sharp as ever. In what way do you regard “gay men” as tending to be conservative? Admittedly, I would never have imagined Noel Coward storming the gates of Buckingham Palace, but… I suspect you had something else in mind. I can almost see it, but not quite, please explain more. Also, what about Lesbians?
Richard Easbey,
You didn’t have a wager riding on Brokeback Mountain for Best Picture? Is this a fit of pique?
We had cable TV—50-60 channels.
Wife’s brother is a bigshot with one of the satellite outfits, so now we have satellite—200 channels.
I love movies, so I get them thru the mail and watch them, along with sports and documentaries, on the new big TV I got for my B’day last year.
I rarely go to theaters any more except when something big like a new Potter movie gets the kids all excited.
I can remember when there were 3 or 4 TV channels, when every weekend meant going to the movies, when stars were the most glamorous things around, when there just wasn’t that much going on, so who got the best actor or best movie award was somehow important.
It just isn’t any longer. There are a million things to watch, to follow, to play with, (like the internet on my laptop), and every Tom, Dick, and Suzie is now a “celebrity” because they were in some bad movie or worse TV series.
Movies are fading, just like the networks, because there are simply way too many other things to do and pay attention to that compete for our time and money.
It’s too bad, in a way. All that glamour and mystique replaced by simple-minded politics and undeserved conceit.
very retired says: Movies are fading, just like the networks, because there are simply way too many other things to do and pay attention to that compete for our time and money.
Extraordinary, but true. Those of us who grew up going to the movies have made the switch from MSM and the movies into doing things how we like, at our convenience. As very retired says, there’s just too much to do today and we can control it ourselves. We don’t have to wait for it to open in theatre near us.
Larger-than-life movie stars are shrinking in population. Especially actresses.
Movies are fading, just like the networks
Anyone else read this and think of Nora Desmond? “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”
Maybe it is because great, even glossy films come from many places outside tinseltown, which is showing itself to be what it is – self-absorbed. The patronising “Best Foreign Film”??? Imagine that in other award lineups…
Without major reconstructive surgery, the Oscars will become the Amercian film awards and not a global award it appeared to be.
Just be thankful that a great movie such as Crash won Best Film not that awful student agitprop dirge that is The Constant Gardener. I havent seen Brokeback Mountain yet but i may boycott it after the incredibly sore loser comments (that would make Jose Mourinho blush) from director, Ang Lee, stating that Crash only won because America wasn’t ready for a film about gay cowboys – arrogant tosser.
As a result of the movies coming out allied to the kind of dross on TV, regular and satellite, a quick look round my house on an average evening would find 4 out of the 5 inhabitants reading, that is even true of weekends.
There is a fantastic array of brilliant kids/teenager authors writing these days. Also, the British Sci-Fi scene is probably better than it has ever been.
Rather than go LCD HDTV, we are investing our spare cash in comfy reading chairs and dedicated reading lights.
Isn’t anybody going to rip into Clooney for his fatuous speech? Smug preening of that ilk makes the whole thing a turn off for me.
“and annoying preliminary announcements and adverts.”
Obviously you weren’t watching DVDs, then…
Alan, I use the fast-forward function to deal with that problem. There are a few cases where you have to put up with a bit of blurb, but it is still far less than in a movie at a cinema.
The only reason to watch the schmoozefest is the hope that some actress will go into emotional meltdown and thank her poodle’s shrink for making her career possible.
Greer Garson went on for an hour when she won for ‘Mrs Miniver’. They had to turn the mike off.
Sally Field is the modern champ for ‘Norma Rae’ (“You like me! You really like me!”) but Gwynnie Paltrow and Halle Berry came close.
Speaking of movies, I’m sitting here in the middle of the morning, my early chores of driving the kids to school and fixing breakfast for my mother all taken care of, and while I have my toast and coffee, I came across a showing of Hitchcock’s “The Birds” on one of the umpteen movie channels we get.
I’ve always liked Hitchcock, and really liked “The Birds”, since I’ve always liked that tingle you get when something scares the bejabbers out of you, (how’s that for homespun, huh?), even though you know it’s only a movie, and your really safe, and no, the parakeet is not looking funny at you.
Anyway, I’ve read a dozen different interpretaions of this story, and what Hitchcock meant, and what statement was being made and all, but I have my own.
I think the story was about the inexplicable nature of nature. About how things sometimes just seem to happen, and we can’t for the life of us figure out why, what it all meant, or will it happen again.
Like the asteroid killing the dinosaurs, or Mt St Helens, or a bomb on the subway killing your daughter and destroying something deep inside you, as in the story I read about the clergywoman who has resigned because she just can’t forgive the bombers like a good Christian should.
I don’t mean reality is unknowable. On the contrary, the reason I believe so strongly in rational inquiry and the scientific method is precisely because the universe seems so comprehensible if we approach it in the correst fashion, i.e., with disciplined, rational imagination as opposed to fearful fantasies about witches, curses, angels, and such nightmarish nonsense as the idea that the gods require human hearts to be cut out and offered or it won’t rain anymore.
Now, that’s inexplicable. No wonder such people couldn’t even invent the wheel. The universe was a lifetime grope through a carnival house of horrors to anyone trapped in such insanity masquerading as a culture.
And so, what the hell am I on about here, anyway.
One of my favorite people died suddenly yesterday from a stroke. His name was Kirby Puckett. He played baseball with a zest and joyful spirit rarely found anywhere, at any time.
I love baseball way out of proportion to its importance in this slightly cockeyed world. I’ve watched and listened and played and coached ever since I was five or six years old. Baseball games are one of the two times I’m allowed to sing, and I get two songs, the anthem and “Take me out…”.
Zhivago’s brother says, “If people love poetry, they love poets, and noone loves poetry like a Russian.”
Well, if you love baseball, you love special players, and noone loves baseball like a little leaguer, which I’ve been all my life.
But, in its inscrutable and inexplicable way, death has come for a 45 yr old man, and a decent soul, for all his all too human faults, has gone wherever souls go when people die.
I apologize for all this maundering on. But today, reality really does seem inexplicable. And a little sadder than usual.
Just thought I’d interject that Crash deserved the best movie award. I watched it on Sunday night on DVD and was extremely impressed. The tingle that veryretired mentioned was present in droves, and that doesn’t happen often with movies nowadays.
As to the decline in ratings for the ceremony, I can’t say I’m that surprised. In Scotland it seems that the internet has overtaken TV in terms of time spent (according to a study by google, see here, yes I know its from the guardian and I refuse to apologise for that.) There’s so much dross telly these days that I only look away from the interweb for things like The Sky At Night and The West Wing.
Hollywood itself is dieing. The movies get worse, the public stays away more, etc. What’s ironic is that the TV shows now being produced are much better than the movies being produced. This is a real turnaround as movies used to be much better than the average crap on the old three network system. (Three networks in the US — ABC, CBS, NBC.)
As an example, my favorite TV show, The Shield, is better, week after week, than just about anything released in the theaters the last couple of years. Better acting, better scripts, better style. And there are a number of TV shows you can say that about — The Sopranos, Buffy (when it was still on the air), Sex and the City, Malcom in the Middle, etc., etc., etc. And this is not to discount great current British TV shows like The Office. (Yes, I know it’s no longer on the air.)
Of course, all of this great TV was made possible by the huge number of networks now offering weekly fare (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, UPN, WB, FX, USA, HBO, heck even ESPN will air movies that they themselves produced.)
I think a week in Guantanamo Bay would be preferable to watching that crowd of facile arrogant parasites preening.
BBC radio, in particular, seems to think that who won which TV/Film/Music award for best whatever at whichever awards ceremony is of huge interest. It just isn’t – it’s intensely boring and becomes more so through endless repetition.
The thing about TV/radio/film awards is that they are supremely redundant because you can easily go out and watch them yourself and make your own decision. It’s not even as if the judges of these awards even explain their decisions – so we know nothing of their thinking, which might provide some interest. If a bunch of luvvies want to award each other gongs, then fine, but can’t they be encouraged to do it privately?
Awards ceremonies based on the views of a genuinely expert panel about something that the public find much more difficult to assess themselves would be much more interesting and even educational, were these to be televised and explanations given. How about aeronatics industry awards – the years best safety innovation, the greatest technical advance, etc. – these would be of far greater interest.
I used to watch the Oscars for idle fun. The last time I watched was when that absurd POS Titanic won. The previous year or so, a movie like Memento got nothing, but Titanic got what, seven or eight awards? I decided then that Oscar and I no longer had anything to say to each other. Now I only have to hear second-hand reports of Michael Moore informing us that we live in a fake country or George Clooney mincing about what a consummate world citizen he is.
Are the BAFTAs broadcast in GB? Do they draw a big audience?
I think it’s because the general population doens’t agree with who wins the Oscars, so they end up not being interested in the end.
I love movies and i love the Oscars. I love the ridiculous, pompous speeches and the fact that noone ever laughs at the compere’s jokes (Jon Stewart was actually very good – “Bjork couldn’t make it becuase she was shot by Dick Cheney on her way here” being my favourite).
I love the fact that movies are the global conversational equivalent of the dollar. The best way to chat with a stranger in any country is to talk about movies or football. I think that if you don’t like movies, you don’t much like people.
I would also remind the Hollywood doomsayers that 1in 3 US households with a TV watched the Oscars and over 500 million people worldwide tuned in from 150 countries.
Hardly something to fret about.
“Foreign film” = “foreign-language” film.
Still chauvinistic, but as the man said: if they had something worthwhile to say, they’d have said it in English.
As I posted, I got a grand slam for this year’s awards: never saw ONE of the films nominated, didn’t watch the awards show.
Might see Capote eventually, if only to see Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is a superb character actor.
As for all the others: pass.
The last decent film for grownups made in Hollywood was Fight Club.
Side note: Saw Matador (Pierce Brosnan) a couple weeks back. If you haven’t seen it, please do so. (No thanks necessary, all part of the service.)
Still chauvinistic, but as the man said: if they had something worthwhile to say, they’d have said it in English.
Spoken by a dude with a Dutch surname. WTF?