The stages of reaction to the news that James Franco and Anne Hathaway will host the Academy Awards next year are turning over at a record pace. There was initial shock at the randomness of their selection; the acceptance that maybe the pair would make beautiful -- if awkward -- music together; and now, the rationalizations for putting them on the Kodak Theater stage in the first place. "This year's telecast isn't just about 'getting to the youth' -- its whole theme is going to reflect on this history of movies through the perspective of a young person experiencing the movies for the first time," an insider told Vulture. Which is a fancy way of saying it's about getting to the youth.
And therein, as the Bard would tell us, lies the rub. "Youth," whatever metric you use to define it, isn't interested in watching the Oscars. They never have been, and they never will be. Hell, many of you reading this aren't even interested in watching the Oscars. If you do watch it likely has something to do with the fact that you love movies, enjoy pomp and circumstance, and are happy to see your favorites films validated with an award.
That seems to be the issue that Oscar producers are worried about. A former Oscar telecast producer told Vulture that the 2011 ceremonies could be a ratings bloodbath because the general population won't see their favorite films nominated. It's all the fault of that damn "art house" fare. "The King's Speech, The Kids Are All Right, Winter's Bone, The Social Network -- that sort of stuff. Outside of Inception, the biggest star in that bunch is Annette Bening. The [Academy's board of] governors are going to love it, but ABC must be going insane."
Where to start? How about with Toy Story 3, which grossed over $414 million and will certainly get one of the ten slots for Best Picture? Or maybe with The Social Network, an "art house" film that will top $100 million? Yes, this year's crop of Best Picture candidates won't include Avatar -- and won't have the added push of an audience favorite like The Blind Side or District 9 -- but yet-to-be-widely-released films like The Fighter, True Grit and even The King's Speech, all seem destined to find pretty solid audiences of all ages. They're being sold as crowd-pleasers, not snoozers.
Besides, just because the nominated films earn lots of money, doesn't necessarily mean your little brother will watch the Oscars anyway. This year's ceremony included the biggest movie of all time, a gossipy ex-versus-ex subplot and Taylor Lautner, and the 18-34 demographic numbers still fell from the year before.
Which means that the Oscar producers -- whether they want to admit it or not -- are hoping that Franco and Hathaway will be that extra push for Generation Y to put down their iPhones. And that's too bad. Never mind that neither are "stars" (in that way that Robert Downey Jr. and Ben Stiller, two people mentioned as possible hosts for this year's ceremonies, are); neither have enough power to bring in the demographically acceptable viewers that ABC and the Academy wants. Not even Taylor Lautner, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattison do. (OK, maybe they do.)
Is there a non-Twilight-based solution to all this? Short of canceling the telecast and sending mobile alerts every time someone wins an award, probably not. But should it really matter? Over 40 million people watched the Oscars this year -- even during a bad year like 2008, 32 million people watched. The scale for successful, non-sporting-event television has shifted dramatically in the last five years; Glee is a huge hit and only 12 million people watch weekly. Maybe it's time for the Oscar producers to stop worrying about all those eyeballs fixed on something else, and start worrying about all those eyeballs tuning in.