Oscars Consider Moving To January: Report

Another year, another attempt by the Oscars to make a drastic change to how they do business. Nikke Finke of Deadline reported last night that the Academy Awards Board Of Governors discussed moving the Oscars to January.

I've just learned that, at tonight's Board of Governors meeting of the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, members discussed moving up the 2011 Oscars to sometime in January…

…the moguls see potential plusses. "The awards season is too long currently. This will shorten and reduce the amount of campaigning," one studio head told me tonight. "Also, it will make the Oscars the definitive awards show again.”

I don’t really know that the Oscars ever stopped being the definitive awards show. The Golden Globes are still run by six addled French guys who will gladly nominate “It’s Complicated” for unknown consideration. And the other award shows exist strictly to provide US Weekly with red carpet shots, and to give Oscar prognosticators a chance to talk about Oscar momentum. No one actually pays attention to who wins a SAG award and who doesn’t. I’m not even sure the actors winning the award remember.

But they’re right in saying the awards season (more specifically, the Oscar campaign season is too long). It gives people far too much time to concoct backlashes against movies that don’t really merit a backlash. Remember the mild “Hurt Locker” backlash? That was weird. That kind of thing only happens when you hold the Oscars three months after everyone is tired of talking about the Oscars. Best to just get the Oscars out of the way early, so the rest of us can get on with our lives. Unless it gets in the way of the NFL playoffs. That I cannot abide.

I doubt they’ll go through with this plan. They already expanded the Best Picture category and got better ratings out of it. A scheduling change will do little to make the Oscars sexier, or more appealing to people. They already moved it to February from late March, then back to early March this year. And they moved it from Monday night to Sunday night a while back. “Scrubs” had a more secure time slot than this show. Moving it to January will do little to inherently change the nature of the awards. All it will do is have the Nikki Finkes of the world spend a week gasping about it.

Your Oscar producers this year are Don Mischer and Bruce Cohen. The show airs on February 27, 2011. When it airs in 2012 is anyone’s guess.

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