Earlier Oscar date to have ripple effect
By Claudia Puig
USA Today
Oscar's efforts to freshen up have Hollywood talking.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences last week revealed plans to move the Oscar ceremony from late March to late February, starting in 2004. The goals: keep the nominees fresher in people's minds, squeeze out some competitors, cut award campaigning and, perhaps most significant, boost the ratings for its beleaguered network, ABC.
While some in the industry believe the move could make for a more streamlined awards season, others say it could instead create more concentrated clutter.
"As an academy voter, I do believe that a shortening of the time period is positive," says Amir Malin, chief executive of Artisan Entertainment, which releases mostly low-budget, art-house films. "We can all benefit from a shorter time frame. The period is so long now that there's a sort of numbing effect of this daily barrage of both trade and consumer advertising. There gets to be a point in that process where it's overwhelming to a negative effect."
Those affiliated with larger studios seem to agree. Says Jeff Blake, president of Sony Pictures Distributing: "Even with the most worthy Oscar candidate, it's a long march from the end of the calendar year until the end of March. I think the move is interesting."
The academy has tentatively scheduled the 2004 show for Feb. 29, and it will also move the nomination announcements, which have been in the second week of February.
The move will likely have a ripple effect with all the other awards-season honors.
Academy executive director Bruce Davis says one aim of the change is to eliminate competition. "The board of governors has been eyeing all the awards-season clutter with a jaundiced eye over the last few years," Davis says. If there are so many awards shows in a short time, he said, they begin getting in each others way.
Most prominent in their sights: the Golden Globes. Usually given out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association on the third weekend of January, the Globes have become more glitzy and may have stolen some Oscar drama.
The Globes are often cited as indicators of who will land Oscar nominations and are touted both in ads aimed at moviegoers and those aimed at academy voters. The ceremony obviously would lose clout if Oscar nominations came out first.
"Probably this would diminish the import of the Golden Globes," Malin says. "If you have the Oscar process streamlined, it takes away from the timing advantage that the Golden Globes have. It doesn't take it away 100 percent, but it certainly diminishes the effect of those awards. That glow that emanates from the Golden Globes at the end of January will be a very diminished glow because of timing, which will benefit the Oscar telecast."
Other groups will be affected, too. Nearly every critics organization and Hollywood guild gives out awards, with many hoping to influence the Oscar vote. Industry organizations, such as the Directors, Screen Actors and Writers guilds, would probably move their events up. Indeed, there is already discussion under way at the Directors Guild about settling on an earlier date for 2004.
Though Davis says the academy hopes that shortening the season would curtail studios' campaigns, many believe they could get worse.
"You will not end negative campaigning. If anything, the reverse will be true," says Martin Grove, a columnist for "The Hollywood Reporter "online. "A shorter time frame creates more of a feeling of desperation. The same marketing people will say, 'Hey, we've only got X number of weeks now to make this work. We better pull out all the stops.' Hollywood publicists are not wimps."
Says Jean Oppenheimer, president of the Los Angeles Film Critics' Association: "Anything they can do to stop all the publicity push is good, but it will just be more intense. (And) if they're doing the nominations even earlier, so there's the same amount of time, it doesn't accomplish what they seem to think it will."
There are other logistical obstacles as well, such as voters seeing all the films.
"They haven't thought it through," says Grove. "By shortening it, it would make it harder for most academy members to see the films. You take away a lot of opportunity to see the smaller products and the chance to take a second look. You look at last year's films like "Monster's Ball" or "In the Bedroom," films that didn't have the high profile of, say, "A Beautiful Mind." These kinds of films will suffer. They'll be the last to get attention."
Grove also points to all that lost box office: "It takes away the opportunity to generate a great deal of ticket sales between nomination and ceremony. Especially for those that aren't blockbusters to begin with, that's a great deal of money."
Yet Malin, whose company champions just the sort of film that Grove says would be short-changed, says lower-profile nominees will hold up just fine.
"I believe that all quality films that have already been championed by the academy through the nominating process will have sufficient visibility, especially in today's world of VHS and DVD," Malin says, stressing that most academy members are conscientious about seeing all the films. "There's ample opportunity to see the films. Obviously, the biggest losers will be the trade publications and the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times (because of lost ad revenues). But the winners will be the process in general."
The other winner, of course, is ABC and its parent company, Disney. By airing the Oscars ceremony in late February, ABC, now the third-place network, could get a significant ratings boost.
