Is anyone actually watching the Oscars anymore? Until ‘The Incident’ between Messrs Smith and Rock last year the direction of travel was clear. Between 2014 and 2020 the televised Academy Awards lost almost half their viewers, the number falling from 43 to 23 million. This year, in March, they were at 18 million with punters only tuning in perhaps to see some bitch-slapping between Cate Blanchett and Meryl Streep.
As the importance of cinema has dwindled, the po-faced self‑importance of the film industry has grown
The first Oscars were presented in front of 270 people with tickets costing five dollars and a ceremony which ran for 15 minutes; now it’s – as the 1979 host Johnny Carson quipped – ‘two hours of sparkling entertainment spread over a four-hour show’. This may be classic over-compensation; in 1930, 65 per cent of Americans went to the cinema weekly, while now it’s less than a tenth.We
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