Oscars 2022 to Change Broadcasting Techniques to Increase Viewership

In a bid to increase their surprisingly decreasing viewership ratings, the Academy Awards will be making specific changes to their 2022 live broadcast.

The Oscars have been creating headlines for a considerable amount of time for the past two years, majorly because of how they failed to rake in viewers. Last years’ 93rd Academy Awards was reportedly the lowest-rated ceremony in its history. It was a massive 58% drop from 2020’s awards ceremony. 

While many factors come into play, the Oscar committee is trying its best to bring back the lost spark of glory this year.

Hollywood insider Matthew Belloni’s newsletter What I’m Hearing… (via Screenrant) revealed some word-of-mouth business he has come across. According to him, the board of governors is trying to shuffle the awards categories during commercials. This tactic might keep the viewers in their seats as they await the nominees or awardees.

From what Belloni’s heard, categories such as the short films will be announced and presented during ad breaks or before the main show. They will earn a mention in the main show too.

Another change that the 2022 Oscars will try to make is to create a celebratory atmosphere rather than a competing one. It will attempt to celebrate the movies up for awards for being cinematic masterpieces and not turn them into a movie competition platform.

Belloni also talked about why he thinks most people haven’t seen Academy’s films that are nominated. He gave “increasingly niche tastes of Academy members” as the reason.

This supports Variety’s survey findings that none of the Best Picture nominations in the 93rd Academy Awards scored even 50% in audience awareness. These included Nomadland, The Trial of Chicago 7, and Judas and the Black Messiah.

This year’s Academy Awards ceremony has been postponed by a month and will be held on March 27, 2022, at Dolby Theatre.

It will be interesting to see if these new tactics and maybe some changes in finalizing nominations in the 2022 Oscars will lead to their desired goal of increasing viewership or not.

Source: ScreenRant