Last weekend was terrible for awards ceremonies. The Baftas, defined by a painful monologue from Joanna Lumley, was watched by 500,000 fewer people than last year. Meanwhile, the number of 18 to 49-year-olds watching the Grammys has reached an all-time low.
Don’t expect the Oscars to fare any better; they have lost millions of viewers since 2014. Add to this the fact that comparatively few people have watched most of the nominated films (show me a single member of the public who paid to see The Wife, I dare you) and you have got a ratings timebomb.
Viewers are deserting awards shows in droves and something needs to be done. But what? Retool them to celebrate legitimately popular work? That’s what the Oscars mooted last year when it suggested a best popular film category – and it was swiftly booed out of town.
Another option would be to shorten the length of the ceremonies, but this won’t work either; the Oscars recently announced plans to hide several categories in ad breaks, and the outrage in some quarters (the cinematographers, makeup artists and editors who this year won’t get their moment on the small screen) has been palpable.
What else can they do? Fewer songs? Enforced speech brevity? An In Memoriam segment that consists of the words: “People die: get over it”?
Fortunately, I have the perfect solution: don’t televise awards shows. Just don’t do it. Awards shows are the antithesis of good television. They’re too long and too monotonous and too self-important. And by God, we should have learned by now not to give celebrities any more attention than they already have. It just makes them think that we want to hear them spewing half-baked opinions about Donald Trump and Brexit. We don’t want that. We’ve already got me for that.
I’m not suggesting that the awards shows shouldn’t happen. I’m just saying that the awards should be announced in the form of a press release at the end of the ceremony, followed by a handful of YouTube clips showing some nice outfits and a couple of speeches. That’s how most of us consume them now anyway. Why not just bite the bullet?
