Do The Oscars’ Record-Low Ratings Mean We’re Finally Over Awards Ceremonies?

I wouldn’t say no one is watching awards shows anymore, but the audience is much smaller than it used to be. This past Sunday’s Oscars, with a record-low viewership of about 10 million, was the least-watched ceremony in the history of televised Oscar broadcasts. Have we finally turned the corner and put our long national nightmare of caring about these awards ceremonies behind us?

I honestly can’t see people being more inclined to tune in next year after this year’s ceremony.

The biggest issue I can think of is the way the ceremony moved Best Picture, which is traditionally the last award for the night, forward so that they could save Best Actor for last. A lot of people were expecting this to be because the award would be going to the late Chadwick Boseman, and were very displeased with what feels a lot like a bait and switch.

Joyce Eng told The New York Post Hopkins win was down to the fact that The Father released just before the eligibility deadline and, like so many Oscar-bait films before it, was fresh in the mind of voters who had already moved on from Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

Is this really what people have been getting all excited about for the last 90-some years? Not only is it just people giving each other gold statues for playing pretend, but apparently they’re just giving them to the film they’ve seen the most recently. You know, as long as it’s depressing and obscure or at least makes the old white people who vote for these sorts of things feel less racist.

And keep in mind that all the weirdness with this year’s ceremony isn’t why people didn’t tune in; how could they have known in advance it would be a weird disaster of a ceremony? No, everything people hated about the ceremony was only compounded by the fact that people don’t care anymore to begin with.