Tighter Timetable Won't Boost Ratings For Oscar Telecast

Awards advice: The Screen Actors Guild's decision to move its 2004 awards telecast to Feb. 8 from early March, is the latest indication that the Motion Picture Academy's new Oscar timetable won't reduce award show clutter. In fact, it seems to be having the opposite effect.

Hollywood already faces a major logjam of awards ceremonies and telecasts in late January and early February of 2004. The Golden Globes will continue to dominate late January with its highly rated telecast on NBC. The British Academy will go head to head with SAG and bestow its BAFTAs on Sunday, Feb. 8. That same weekend will see the Directors Guild celebrating on Saturday, Feb. 7. The Producers Guild will be doing its partying on Sunday, Jan. 25.

Not everyone's been heard from yet, but no one appears to be folding their event tents. The Writers Guild will undoubtedly pick a date somewhere in the same greatly compressed time frame. So will the other guilds that also want to honor their members with well-deserved awards and ceremonies. And so will all the major market critics' groups that have for years saluted Hollywood's best films and filmmakers.

By moving the Oscars to Feb. 29, 2004 the Academy has said it hopes to boost its ABC network telecast's ratings and try to put an end to the mudslinging campaign tactics that marred last year's competition. Frankly, it's difficult to see how the date change will achieve either tactic. The Academy's ratings woes don't stem from the fact that there are too many other awards shows on television. Aside from the Golden Globes, which consistently produces -- through the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn and Dick Clark Prods. -- the year's best awards event for those attending and delivers via NBC the year's best awards telecast for those at home, Oscar has very little serious competition.

The Globes, by the way, received a bigger Nielsen rating this year than the Grammy Awards, making the Globes the No. 2 awards telecast after the Oscars. The Academy's shift to late February will, if anything, make the Globes an even stronger mid-January bellwether for the Oscars since the Oscar nominations will have to come soon after the Globes winners are announced. The less time between the two events, the more influential it will be to have just won a Golden Globe. When Hollywood realizes this you can expect to see studios campaign all the harder for Globe nominations and wins.

As for the handful of other industry awards telecasts, they're carried mostly on cable networks that have less potential audience than the Oscars have on ABC. SAG's awards, for instance, will be seen on TNT for the seventh consecutive year. There will be many ABC viewers tuning in for the Oscars who don't get cable and, therefore, never even had the opportunity to watch SAG's awards. Moreover, even if they did see them, why should that make them less interested in knowing who's going to win the Oscars?

The problem with the Oscar telecast is that it's too long, too dull, too inside for people outside the industry, offers too many special recognition awards that are only meaningful to people sitting in the theater -- and, frankly, not even to some of them -- and goes on far too late in the evening on the East Coast for most people to stay with until the end if they've got to get up Monday morning to go to work or school. The telecast's length is sometimes said to result from Oscar winners rambling on and on as they thank their agents and wives and children, etc. But, for the most part, that's not the problem. Anyone who's seen the show knows the real problem is that the more additional awards the Academy hands out, the more time it takes to properly present and receive them. It's not that the special awards aren't important or well-deserved or that the people receiving them aren't worthy of being honored. It's just that if there were a way to do it other than during the Oscar telecast it would result in a show with a shorter running time and a better pace in terms of satisfying a global television audience.

As for reducing the negative campaigning that surfaced in a major way last year, cutting down on the amount of time between the nominations -- whose announcement date in 2004 isn't known yet -- and the telecast is more likely to do the reverse. A shorter window of opportunity in which to win is more likely to create a feeling of desperation among the marketing teams behind the front running candidates. If there's mud to be thrown in the hopes of influencing Academy members not to vote for the competition, that mud will have to be thrown all the harder because in a week or two it won't make any difference what happens. Moreover, there probably won't even be sufficient time in which to respond to negative campaigning if your picture happens to be the one that's being attacked. With less voting time, a well-timed offensive will stand a greater chance for success.

As other organizations scramble to find dates and hotels to hold their awards events in 2004, they're finding themselves crammed into a greatly compressed period of time. Even though they'll wind up choosing a time and place to celebrate, they may find themselves having to fight to get certain high-profile nominees to attend their awards ceremonies. That's because people can't be in two places at the same time. If, for instance, someone happens to be both a SAG and a BAFTA nominee in 2004, he or she will have to choose where to be on Sunday, Feb. 8.

In case you think such a situation isn't very likely or might only affect one or two people, think again. Last year the BAFTAs were handed out Feb. 24 in London at the Odeon Leicester Square and were telecast live in the U.K. on BBC1. The SAG Awards were announced March 10 at the Los Angeles Exposition Center and televised live on TNT. If they had been held on the same night last year, nine people nominated for 11 awards would have had to choose between being in London or Los Angeles.

In case you don't have instant recall of who the SAG and BAFTA nominees were last year -- well, neither did I, but I did make time to look them up -- here's a quick summary of the races for best lead and supporting actor and actress. The British Academy's lead actress nominees were: Judi Dench (who won for "Iris"), Nicole Kidman ("The Others"), Sissy Spacek ("In the Bedroom"), Audrey Tautou ("Amelie") and Renee Zellweger ("Bridget Jones's Diary"). The SAG nominees for best female actor in a lead role were Halle Berry (who won for "Monster's Ball"), Jennifer Connelly ("A Beautiful Mind"), Judi Dench ("Iris"), Sissy Spacek ("Bedroom") and Renee Zellweger ("Bridget"). Dench, Spacek and Zellweger would have had to miss one of the two awards ceremonies. So would Connelly, who was also a BAFTA nominee for supporting actress.

In last year's BAFTA race for best actor in a lead role, the nominees were: Jim Broadbent ("Iris"), Russell Crowe (who won for "Mind"), Ian McKellen ("The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring"), Kevin Spacey ("The Shipping News") and Tom Wilkinson ("Bedroom"). The SAG nominees for best male actor in a lead role were: Russell Crowe (who won for "Mind"), Kevin Kline ("Life as a House"), Sean Penn ("I Am Sam"), Denzel Washington ("Training Day") and Tom Wilkinson ("Bedroom"). In this case, Crowe and Wilkinson would all have had to send regrets to one of the two awards events. So would Broadbent and McKellan, both of whom were also SAG supporting actor nominees.

In the BAFTA race for best actress in a supporting role, last year's nominees were: Jennifer Connelly (who won for "Mind"), Judi Dench ("Shipping"), Helen Mirren ("Gosford Park"), Maggie Smith ("Gosford") and Kate Winslet ("Iris"). SAG's nominees for best supporting actress were: Cate Blanchett ("Bandits"), Judi Dench ("Shipping"), Cameron Diaz ("Vanilla Sky"), Dakota Fanning ("Sam") and Helen Mirren (who won for "Gosford"). In this category, Connelly, Dench and Mirren would have been pulled in two directions.

Last year's BAFTA nominees for best actor in a supporting role were: Hugh Bonneville ("Iris"), Jim Broadbent (who won for "Moulin Rouge"), Robbie Coltrane ("Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone"), Colin Firth ("Bridget") and Eddie Murphy ("Shrek"). SAG's nominees for best supporting actor were: Jim Broadbent ("Iris"), Hayden Christiansen ("Life"), Ethan Hawke ("Training"), Ben Kingsley ("Sexy Beast") and Ian McKellan (who won for "Rings"). In this race, Broadbent would have had to chose one event over the other. So would McKellan, who was also a best actor BAFTA nominee.

BAFTA's nominations last year for best film went to: "Amelie," "Mind," "Rings" (the winner), "Moulin" and "Shrek." SAG doesn't have a best picture category, but its best ensemble cast award is generally regarded as the equivalent of best film. Last year's ensemble cast SAG nominees were: "Mind," "Gosford" (the winner), "Bedroom," "Moulin" and "Rings." Given those sets of nominations, the filmmakers associated with three of the five pictures -- "Mind," "Rings" and "Moulin" -- would have had to make a choice between ceremonies or, perhaps, where possible send multiple producers in both directions.

This is, of course, only one example of what Oscar's move to Feb. 29 will bring about in 2004, but it makes the point well enough. I'll leave you to draw up your own lists of who might or might not have to decide where they stand the best chance of winning before making their travel arrangements in early February 2004.

Of course, the result of having to make such choices will be less television time for some of the nominees involved since they'll have to miss being somewhere. Even though most of the awards ceremonies don't receive a big national telecast the way the Oscars and Globes do, the smaller events are all covered big-time by syndicated TV programs like "Access Hollywood," "Extra" and "Entertainment Tonight."

The impact that many of these awards season events make on Hollywood may be somewhat diminished because they're likely to be a little less glittering if they have to share star power with competing events. They'll also have to contend with the burn-out factor that makes industry executives and filmmakers less than eager to sit through awards dinners on consecutive nights. There's a limit to how much rubber chicken anyone is willing to eat in one weekend. A case in point could easily be the Director Guild awards, which are set for Saturday, Feb. 7, 2004. Am I the only person in Hollywood who would be less than happy about putting on black tie again the very next night and running to attend the SAG Awards? Of course, if I was going to attend the BAFTAs in London on Sunday, Feb. 8, it wouldn't even be possible for me to be at the DGA dinner in Los Angeles the night before.

When the various other guilds get around to announcing their awards dates for 2004 it will be interesting to see the reaction from industry people as they see how the new compressed season is going to affect them personally. Even more than actors, crafts people like cinematographers and editors and special effects wizards work on multiple films that can all wind up with nominations in various awards races. They, too, will have to choose where to go to hear their names read from the podium.

What's really unfortunate is that all these other awards shows don't really take away from the Oscars. Instead, they enhance and in a way promote the Oscars by providing a basis for informed speculation about who seems most likely to win Oscars. That's what all the excitement is about. People generally don't place office pool bets on who's going to win anything but the Oscars. The Oscars are what people really care about, but a truncated awards season won't allow for the waves of enthusiasm that have been typical in the past as front runners emerge and the Oscar race heats up. I don't think the Academy really envisioned all of these things happening when it decided to experiment with a date change. In the past, the board of governors is said to have reversed itself on decisions it had made. It would be to everyone's advantage -- including the Academy -- if such a reversal were to happen in this case.

Martin Grove is seen Mondays at 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., PT on CNNfn's "The Biz" and is heard weekdays at 1:55 p.m. on KNX (1070 AM) in Los Angeles.