Photo by Cynthia Larsen

From millions to BILLIONS of indifferent viewers

By Ed Goldman

While the Oscars will be handed out this Sunday night, the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences will be giving all of us a far greater prize beginning just three years from now: the ceremony will switch from being broadcast on the ABC-TV network to being streamed on YouTube. You may be asking about our prize. Simple: Now it’ll be much easier to ignore the show. 

I loved watching the Oscars when I was a kid and, as a wannabe actor and writer back then, may even have composed an acceptance speech or two. The dilemma was whether I’d be nominated for acting, writing or even coming up with a Best Song nominee. Ultimately I realized my best bet to be recognized on the show would be during its solemn “In Memoriam” segment. But even that would prove to be an elusive accolade if my sole contribution to the movies was watching them. 

Knowing that a ceremony as lavish as the Oscars will soon be reduced to the viewing limitations of our mobile devices will put at least one industry pro out of a job–the person who, before a major TV event, writes those “How To Watch” blurbs online, which probably attract larger audiences than the event being touted.  

These “How To Watch” guides are instructive for people who aren’t aware that an Oval Office speech, for example, will usually be carried “live” on the  four commercial  broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox), cable stations like CNN and maybe even C-SPAN, the outlet that provides gavel-to-boredom coverage of our government in action (or, if you identify as a realist, our government inaction). In those cases, the answer to “How to Watch” is “Turn on your damn television.” 

While there were ample opportunities to do so, I never attended any of those ubiquitous “Oscar Watch” parties during the 18 years I lived in Los Angeles County, where you could at least feel some sense of participation, if not stakeholder status, since the film and television industry pretty much dominates the economic and conscious landscapes down there.  

When I finally did go to one, it was here in Sacramento, a city whose connection to Hollywood is at best ephemeral, with a couple dozen movies and TV commercials having been shot here—among them, “Lady Bird,” “Lucky Numbers,” for which we stood in for Harrisburg, PA, and the Buster Keaton silent-comedy classic, “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” That gem was shot along a riparian stretch of California’s capital which looks virtually the same as it did in the 1928 film. 

For their Oscar Watch party, the gracious hosts arranged to have four TVs in different rooms of their home tuned to ABC, via cable. One of the oddities of broadcasting revealed itself when I was in one room where we waited for the presenters to open the envelope revealing that year’s Best Actor winner when, from the next room, there came a sudden cheer. The people in that room were receiving the show about seven seconds earlier than we were.  

I recall asking our hosts if their house somehow straddled time zones but they were as perplexed as the rest of us. But a quick call to their cable company provided an answer–should their question have been, “May I be put on hold for 25 minutes?”