If I was in charge of awards season, at this point, I would stop having so many award shows. The oversaturation of “awards shows” makes the big shows less important, less special. It feels like most of the awards contenders are just grimly marching to the Oscars after a whirlwind three-month campaign. Oscar winners have that thousand-yard stare in the press room after their wins. And then there’s the problem with the Oscar telecast itself – always too long, always too padded, always lagging in the middle. The goalposts have shifted in recent years – wanting higher ratings but preferring to be, at best, unmemorable slogs in service of offending no one. The biggest, most memorable Oscar moment of the past decade was hastily edited out of the live American broadcast – that was when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock on stage in 2022. That edit and everything that happened afterwards on the show should have been a ratings bonanza, but it was treated like the worst thing that ever happened! Well, now a further degradation for the biggest award show of the year. Starting in 2029, the Oscar telecast will not appear on ABC or any network. It’s going to YouTube.
In a seismic shift for one of television’s marquee events, the Academy Awards will depart ABC and begin streaming on YouTube beginning in 2029, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Wednesday. ABC will continue to broadcast the annual ceremony through 2028. That year will mark the 100th Oscars.
But starting in 2029, YouTube will retain global rights to streaming the Oscars through 2033. YouTube will effectively be the home to all things Oscars, including red-carpet coverage, the Governors Awards and the Oscar nominations announcement.
“We are thrilled to enter into a multifaceted global partnership with YouTube to be the future home of the Oscars and our year-round Academy programming,” said academy chief executive Bill Kramer and academy president Lynette Howell Taylor. “The Academy is an international organization, and this partnership will allow us to expand access to the work of the Academy to the largest worldwide audience possible — which will be beneficial for our Academy members and the film community.”
While major award shows have added streaming partnerships, the YouTube deal marks the first of the big four — the Oscars, Grammys, Emmys and Tonys — to completely jettison broadcast television. It puts one of the most watched non-NFL broadcasts in the hands of Google. YouTube boasts some 2 billion viewers.
The Academy Awards will stream for free worldwide on YouTube, in addition to YouTube TV subscribers. It will be available with audio tracks in many languages, in addition to closed captioning. Financial terms were not disclosed.
“The Oscars are one of our essential cultural institutions, honoring excellence in storytelling and artistry,” said Neal Mohan, chief executive of YouTube. “Partnering with the academy to bring this celebration of art and entertainment to viewers all over the world will inspire a new generation of creativity and film lovers while staying true to the Oscars’ storied legacy.”
What is AMPAS thinking? My concern was always that ABC had such a chokehold on the rights to the Oscar telecast that eventually Disney would put the Oscars on Disney+ for subscribers only. Like, that was MY nightmare scenario. Putting it on YouTube is more egalitarian, for sure. But it also diminishes the Oscars. It turns the biggest, most significant awards show into something barely higher than a podcast or reaction video.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
