Notes on a Successful Oscars
Notes on a Successful Oscars
Lessons from an entertaining telecast.
A couple years ago, the Oscars telecast hit its nadir. They pushed the presentation of six awards out of the telecast into the pre-show, they relied on fan-voting gimmicks, and the show was still punishingly long. When the best thing that happens to your show is Will Smith slapping Chris Rock so that no one talks about your terrible telecast, you’ve done something wrong. Thankfully, the Academy spent the last two years course-correcting with Jimmy Kimmel as a reliable host and finding ways to streamline the broadcast.
Raj Kapoor was the showrunner of this year’s Oscars, and he did an outstanding job. ABC, to its credit, chose to move the show up an hour, which was a terrific move for East Coast viewers, and I hope becomes the new norm for the broadcast. Furthermore, Kapoor found a subtle and clever way to move the show along by combining the presentation of multiple awards. While the show hasn’t shied away from having presenters give multiple awards in the past, this year it felt better calculated, and the show was done in under three hours and thirty minutes, an impressive feat for a broadcast that can reach four hours.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Commentary Track to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.