The Oscars

Buzz Watch: The Oscars in 60 Seconds

Authored by Jay Baage on February 25, 2008 - 8:49am.

The 2008 Academy Awards were pretty damn long. The preliminary Nielsen ratings estimates show this year's Oscars coming in 20% below last year's. A number of movies with grim themes, combined with an awards season that lacked momentum thanks to the writers strike, were among the factors leading to this year's ratings tumble, according to Variety. Personally, I think Jon Stewart did a good job hosting, but the many commercial breaks is a killer in this new digital universe where people's attention span is much shorter than the networks would like. Fortunately Mahalo Daily with Veronica Belmont have cut the whole thing down to one minute in the video embedded above. For the future, why don't ABC, or whatever network hosts the Oscars, work on product integration and sponsorships that allow a limited number of commercial breaks instead? And isn't the red carpet really the highlight of the evening these days from a content standpoint (as well as the after-parties)?