Oscars still top draw for advertisers despite fickle ratings

The number of people who watched Sunday's Oscars was down and the critics were less than impressed, but Hollywood's biggest night is still a top draw for television advertisers.

This year's telecast - which producers believed could build off 2014's big audience of 43.7 million - attracted its lowest audience in six years and the oldest demographic ever with a median age of 53.

Despite a 15 percent drop in viewership to 37.3 million, however, it is still worth the price tag for advertisers and broadcaster ABC, analysts said.

"It's definitely a showcase place to be, and they (ABC) never have a problem selling it out year to year," said Steve Kalb, a director at ad agency Mullen.

This year's telecast hosted by actor Neil Patrick Harris commanded $1.9 million for 30 seconds of advertising time, up from last year's $1.76 million, the highest among awards shows.

Last year's Ellen DeGeneres-hosted ceremony reaped $95 million in ad revenue, according to Kantar Media. This year's figure is not yet available.

ABC pays $75 million annually to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for TV broadcast rights, said Brad Adgate, the research director at Horizon Media. The contract with Walt Disney Co's ABC and the Academy runs through 2020.

However, the search for a way to attract the younger viewers that advertisers prize most leads many to believe the Academy might have to make long-term changes to the ceremony.

Criticism this year focused on lack of diversity among acting nominees, clunky jokes and the perennial complaint that it is too long. The show clocked in at three hours and 40 minutes and went past midnight on the East Coast.

It also hurt that it was a lackluster year at the box office, and only one film that Americans went to see in droves, "American Sniper," was in the running for best picture.

"It's up to the Academy to change it," Adgate said. "It's up to them to make this awards show more compelling."

The Academy selects the show's producers and host, and its 6,100 members choose winners on merit. The biggest recent change was expanding the best picture nominees from five to up to 10 for the 2010 ceremony in an effort to boost interest.

"As we do each year, the Academy will meet in the coming months to evaluate not only the telecast but also our awards season in its entirety," an Academy spokesperson said in a statement.

ABC declined comment.

Although the Academy might be taking a long view on how to keep the show relevant in a world where TV viewership is on the decline, advertisers are not likely to complain. They like the Oscars reach, prestige and loyal viewers, particularly among women, said Kalb.

One-fifth of Oscar viewers this year said ads increased their likelihood to purchase a product, three times greater than the Super Bowl's audience, according Extreme Reach, a distributor of video advertising.

"It's sort of the Super Bowl for women," Kalb added.

(Editing by Mary Milliken and Andre Grenon)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Neil Patrick Harris salutes movies, pokes Oscars on race

LOS ANGELES -- First-time Oscars host Neil Patrick Harris opened Hollywood's biggest night of the year on Sunday with a fleeting but pointed jibe at the homogenous field of Academy Award nominees, before launching into a spirited musical salute to the magic of movies.

"Tonight we honor Hollywood's best and whitest, sorry, brightest," Harris enthusiastically dead-panned to hearty laughter that seemed to break the usual pre-show jitters among the movie royalty packing the auditorium of the Dolby Theater.

The opening joke was a reference to the criticism Oscar voters faced this year for failing to nominate a single performer of color in any of the acting categories for the first time in many years.

Without wasting another moment, Harris, 41, segued into an opening song-and-dance tribute to the movies, showing off his chops as a live comedy-musical performer, and a conscious effort of Oscar producers to connect with tech-savvy younger television viewers.

"Check out the glamor, and glitter/people tweeting on the twitter, and no one's drunk and bitter yet/because no one has lost," he sang.

Before the number and the on-screen explosion of computer-graphic imagery of film classics had ended, Harris was joined by actress Anna Kendrick, a star of last year's fairy-tale film musical "Into the Woods," and then by Jack Black, leaping onto stage from the audience to play an angry contrarian before being driven away again by Kendrick's hurled shoe.

The performance ended with wild applause, as Harris notes a great paradox of the Oscar -- that few of the most honored movies at the Academy Awards are blockbuster successes.

One notable exception this year, as Harris pointed out, was "American Sniper," which alone grossed at least half of the box office earned by the seven other best picture nominees combined.

"To put that into perspective, everybody on this side of the aisle is the seven other nominees, and 'American Sniper' is Oprah," he said, adding as the camera cut to a perplexed Oprah Winfrey, "Because you're rich."

In one of his zanier escapades, and an homage to a memorable scene from Oscar front-runner "Birdman," Harris ventured from backstage to the show's main stage, followed by a camera, dressed only in his underpants, shoes and socks to introduce presenters of the sound-mixing award, with the words: "Acting is a noble profession."

Harris, who previously has won three Emmys for hosting Broadway's Tony Awards, was recruited by Oscar producers as a hoped-for bridge between older movie fans and younger viewers that the Academy Awards have been desperate to attract in greater numbers.

Harris has a young following himself as a star of the hit CBS sitcom "How I Met Your Mother."

One obvious sign of the outreach to younger viewers came in a musical performance of the pop duo Tegan and Sara teaming up with former "Saturday Night Live" star Andy Samberg and the Lonely Island trio for a rendering of the kids favorite "Everything Is Awesome."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com