Top 5 ways to fix the Oscars

While critics ravaged Hollywood's biggest awards ceremony, ratings drooped. How can the Academy improve the Oscars next year?

The Oscars lost 12 percent of the 18-49 demographic this year, despite the supposed lure of "young and hip" hosts.
(Image credit: Getty)

The goal: A refreshed, hipper version of the Oscars to draw in a younger audience. The result: A ceremony "about as relevant as Nehru jackets and love beads," says Colin Covert in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The numbers back that up: Viewership in the coveted 18- to 49-year-old demographic was actually down 12 percent, and overall viewership plummeted more than 10 percent. What can the Academy do to win back the audience for its annual awards extravaganza? Here, five suggestions:

1. Hire more experienced hosts

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

2. Depend less on scripted moments

"It was downright painful" to watch Franco and Hathaway, says Sylvia Franklin in Chicago Now, "but it wasn't their fault. They're actors, working with material they're given." The show needs new producers who understand that the Oscars work best with comedian hosts who can improvise on the fly, reading "the audience like a book."

3. Move to cable

Hey, Academy, when one of your ceremony's biggest moments is Melissa Leo dropping the F-bomb, you should pay attention, says David Fagin in Aol News. How is it that a show celebrating "some of the most deranged and spoiled members of our society — actors" — is so clean, uptight, and boring. "Even Sesame Street is more edgy these days." To save Oscar, "void the contract with ABC and let HBO take over the broadcast."

4. Bring back the crowd shots

Bring back the "gauche cutaway shots for which the Oscars are so rightly renowned," says Hadley Freeman in The Guardian. For some reason, the awkward but entertaining "close-ups on the losers during the winner's speech" were few and far between, and where was the classic "quick cut to Morgan Freeman when someone makes a faintly racial joke ('He's laughing! So it's not racist!')"? Let us see the stars react.

5. Strive to, you know, entertain

After this year, the "deluded" Academy needs to "snap out of it and maybe take a page from the Grammys, which have made the show more about entertaining people than handing out awards," says Hal Boedeker in the Orlando Sentinel. How about "a showstopping number here and there" to break up the inevitably monotonous and boring acceptance speeches? suggests John Lopez in Vanity Fair.