by Steve Sternberg
The upcoming Academy Awards broadcast on ABC is poised to do well in the ratings. The controversial decision to expand the Best Picture category from 5 to 10 films might frustrate purists, but it should also draw additional viewers.
Oscar ratings tend to fluctuate a bit from year to year, often based on whether higher- or lower-profile films receive the most attention. It’s no coincidence that the lowest rated broadcasts tend to be in years when less popular movies dominate the Best Picture nominees.
Over the past 10 years, two of the lowest rated broadcasts were the last two. Last year’s winner, Slumdog Millionaire, was up against Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, and The Reader – all quality movies, but not exactly major box office hits. Likewise, the previous year had No Country for Old Men facing off against Juno, Atonement, Michael Clayton, and There Will Be Blood.
Had last year’s nominees also included Dark Night, ratings undoubtedly would have been higher. If there were five nominees this year, they might have been The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious, A Serious Man, and An Education. How many would have tuned in? Making room for crowd pleasers like Avatar, District 9, Up, The Blind Side, and Up in the Air will defintitely draw in more viewers. Probably most people that are fairly regular moviegoers have seen at least one or two of these. Now some might say Avatar would have made it anyway. But given that the critical and moviegoer blockbuster, Dark Night didn’t make the cut last year, I’m not sure Avatar would have this year.
Another factor that may contribute to high ratings is that there seems to be a renewed national appetite for big event programming. Recent strong ratings for the Super Bowl, some high-profile award shows, and the Winter Olympics seem to indicate a trend. Perhaps in this economy, more people are staying home and watching television. Maybe families are searching for primetime shows they can watch together (roughly 80% of homes only have one TV turned on during primetime). Or maybe social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are enabling more real-time shared viewing experiences, which the fragmentation of TV viewing in a 200+ channel environment has made all too rare.
As usual, the Academy Awards will continue to be an excellent platform for advertisers. It has significantly less commercial clutter than the typical primetime series. Last year, only 18% of the broadcast contained commercials (national, local, promos, and billboards). The average regularly scheduled primetime series, by comparison, has roughly 28% devoted to commercials/promos.
As I mentioned in my Winter Olympics analysis, Nielsen has a little known rule that it only measures national audiences up to the final national commercial. Last year, the final half hour of the Academy Awards, when three of the four major awards – Best Actress, Actor, and Picture – were handed out, was not rated by Nielsen.
The last national commercial was at 11:25pm. Any subsequent programming was not included in the program’s average ratings. ABC tries to keep viewers tuned in for a three and a half hour broadcast by holding back the biggest awards until the end, and then Nielsen doesn’t report most of it. If they moved these three awards to 10:30pm instead of 11:30pm, national ratings would undoubtedly improve.
A 1996 and 2007 recipient of Ad Age’s Media Maven award, Steve Sternberg has more than 20 years of experience analyzing and reporting on television and programming and video viewing trends for major advertising/media agencies. Read more from Steve at The Sternberg Report.