Academy watchers know to expect the unexpected, but marginalizing 8 traditional Oscar categories was truly a bolt from the blue.
In particular, shifting the live awarding of the film editing Oscar to the live-taped hour preceding the telecast showed just how badly the Academy missed the point about how to boost its ratings. Replacing those awards moments with edited highlights will save only a few minutes and do nothing to grow the audience.
The Academy consistently fails to understand that the only races that matter to viewers are for best picture & acting. The people who watch or skip the bloated telecast with its non-stop premium-priced ads don’t care about seeing clips from movies they didn’t go to see nor do they care about the global filmmakers who made them. If they haven’t seen them, they don’t, as Rhett Butler once said, give a damn.
Of course, the Academy leadership can’t control who gets nominated. It’s Academy members’ fault that they rarely nominate for best picture mainstream films that would attract viewers. What’s missing this year are noms for Spidey, Shang-Chi & 007. Without those box-office giants, Hollywood, which employs most Academy members, would have been on the seriously endangered species list.