This year’s Academy Awards ceremony was the best in recent memory in Ed Board’s opinion. Apparently, it was pretty good in America’s opinion, too.
Sunday night’s Oscar telecast delivered impressive ratings for ABC, way ahead of last year’s numbers.
The telecast averaged 39.9 million viewers, according to preliminary data released Monday by Nielsen Media Research. That’s 3 percent more than the 38.9 million who tuned in last year.
ABC said Monday that the broadcast was up 8 percent to a 12.9 rating in the coveted demographic of adults 18-34 (that includes you, SMU students), the highest rating in that demographic in five years.
Ed Board thinks that there are a lot of reasons for the 79th Oscars’ success.
The decision to have Ellen DeGeneres host was obviously a good one. Her humor was down-to-earth, a welcome change to overblown performances in years past. (Anything’s better than Letterman’s “Oprah-Uma” shtick, right?) Her humor was less insulting than past hosts and much more grounded-giving her a sympathetic air to viewers at home. Which of us wouldn’t ask to have our picture taken with Clint Eastwood if we were anywhere near him?
The celebrity attendees were also on their best behavior. No one made outlandish statements or wore anything drastically inappropriate. The speeches were kept short and meaningful.
In fact, there seemed to be a mutual respect between the Academy and its nominees. Winners weren’t forced to accept their award in the aisles to save time, a major sign of disrespect last year to those winning in lesser-known categories, like Best Costume or Best Visual Effects. Instead, minor categories were honored with live displays like the award for Best Costume.
Every winner seemed genuinely grateful for the opportunity to even be there, much less be honored with an award. Al Gore, though a bit overbearing, was obviously happy to be at the Academy Awards and doubly honored when his pet project, “An Inconvenient Truth,” won for Best Documentary.
Which brings us to another point: the award presenters were actually entertaining this year. Al Gore’s joke about running for president in 2008 got a chuckle out of us. Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear comparing editing to sex was pretty darn funny. Jerry Seinfeld’s presentation of the documentary award was downright hilarious.
But the most jaw droppingly entertaining aspects of the show weren’t the musical performances, per usual. It was the incredible acts that performed between awards. The sound effects choir was impressive, but the real stars were the members of Pilobolus, the dance group that blew our minds by contorting their bodies into recognizable shapes behind a screen. If you missed it, they’re worth checking out on You Tube. They not only kept our interest, but also brought a new level of entertainment to the Oscars.
And that’s really the whole point of the Academy Awards being on television: to be watched. Otherwise, they would just announce the winners the next morning in the papers. Seriously, where’s the fun in watching people you don’t know win awards? But the point of broadcasting the Oscars is to entertain us-and for the first time, we were actually entertained.
