Oscar Podcast #67: Academy Drops Bombshell New Category; Shortens Telecast, Moves Some Awards to Commercial Breaks with guest Daniel Joyaux

There are some major changes coming to the very next Oscars ceremony...and they're not good.

Yesterday, the Academy, in a bombshell announcement, revealed that they would be creating a new category: Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film. 

After yet another year of dropping ratings, this attempt to secure viewership from audiences that have shelled out their money to the year’s blockbusters like Black Panther, Mission: Impossible Fallout and Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again, can be assured that ‘popular’ will now equal ‘best.’ 

The Board of Governors have also committed to a 3-hour telecast. Even though ad rates for the Oscars are still among the highest in television, the length of the Academy Awards has always been the butt of jokes, often by the host themselves. One of the ways the show intends to shorten the running time won’t be asking winners to make quicker speeches but to move some categories to commercial breaks. Other awards shows implement this already, like the Tonys or the the MTV Movie Awards, and it’s likely that categories such as Live Action Short (and its kind) will be moved there. 

The third big change won’t involve next year’s Oscars but the 92nd Academy Awards. They’re moving up from their previously announced date of February 23rd to February 9th. That is going to result in a seismic shift in every other awards show, nomination date and give pause for every studio in how they dole out their fall and winter releases. 

In this podcast, I am joined by returning guest Daniel Joyaux, freelance film writer (The Verge, Vanity Fair, Moviemaker magazine and more) and publications editor for the Sundance Film Festival.

We discuss in enraged detail each of these changes (and the real reason behind them), whether they'll be able to withstand the barrage of hate they received on social media and I posit a way that maybe, just maybe this new category nonsense might actually work the way they want it to. 

This podcast runs 1h 29m