Earlier this week at the American Society of Cinematographers\u2019 nominees announcement luncheon, a publicist friend tipped me off to the fact that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was planning on something different with its own nominations reveal this year. She didn\u2019t know what it was, but she said someone had suggested she not bother getting up early on Tuesday, Jan. 24, to trek it over to the Academy\u2019s offices on Wilshire Boulevard for the annual gathering of publicists and journalists.
Now we know what that was all about .
The Academy announced Friday that it will forgo the assembled audience and instead reveal the nominations through its \u201cown production,\u201d airing on a global live stream and through local broadcasters, including ABC\u2019s \u201cGood Morning America.\u201d
My friend was bummed out, and it\u2019s understandable why. For many, nomination morning is their summit. That cheering and applause you often hear when unexpected names are called \u2014 that\u2019s the hard-working publicists who played a big part in pulling it off. Those kinds of moments can put this behind-the-curtain aspect of the season out in front, and who knows, perhaps that\u2019s part of the Academy\u2019s thinking; the organization has always maintained that it would prefer campaigning be minimized (despite offering the single greatest opportunity of the season to do so).
Nevertheless, some are feeling left out.
\u201cYou have taken away what I have always tried to explain to people as being the cherry on the top of my awards season sundae,\u201d wrote Dorothea Sargent, an awards consultant and publicist since 2003, in an open letter to the Academy on her Facebook page. Comparing the tradition to waiting on Broadway reviews to roll in at Sardi\u2019s in New York, she continued: \u201cNomination morning means more to me than the actual awards ceremony. I see it as a place to gather with this crazy band of publicists and consultants I call my colleagues. I use it to measure my performance and question if I did or didn\u2019t do enough, what worked, what didn\u2019t worked, was there more I could have done.\u201d
Oscars Make Slight Changes to Nominations Announcement
For others, though, Friday\u2019s announcement is a reprieve. Nomination morning is an early day for them that begins well before the 5:30am PT announcement, after all.
\u201cI feel like I can sleep another hour and a half instead of waking up at three o\u2019clock, so selfishly, I\u2019m pretty excited about it,\u201d another consultant told me. \u201cYou don\u2019t sleep the night before, because you\u2019re so nervous, and the morning comes and you\u2019re like, \u2018Oh God, I have to do this.\u2019 But you get there and I don\u2019t know, there\u2019s something about the community. But I guess I can get to the office quicker and start rolling calls, so it\u2019s a time saver.\u201d
One member of the Academy\u2019s public relations branch told me he had been suggesting this for years, as the event is \u201ccostly to stage: elevator guys, security guys, all-nighter, etc.\u201d
Others, meanwhile, noted that doing things this way allows AMPAS brass to dodge immediate, sometimes difficult questions. Last year, for instance, Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs was besieged by queries about the #OscarsSoWhite scandal, which came to quite a head with films like \u201cBeasts of No Nation,\u201d \u201cCreed\u201d and \u201cStraight Outta Compton\u201d missing key nominations.
However, for the Academy, this could \u2014 or at least should \u2014 be the first step toward something bigger. The Oscar nominations announcement has been a missed revenue opportunity for quite some time. What is keeping it from being a primetime special like the Grammys or professional sports drafts, heavily promoted, hosted, and with advertising (non-endemic, probably) sold against it?
The reason for an early morning reveal has always been to capitalize on the day\u2019s news cycle, but it\u2019s sort of an old school mentality, and you\u2019ll obviously get that out of a night time special. Everyone will certainly be talking about the nominees the next morning.
I\u2019m not a programming head, so I don\u2019t know what that would mean to the bottom line, and an Academy rep told me there are no plans for such a thing at this moment. And sure, the Academy wants a global audience. But I think it\u2019s something worth exploring, rather than just giving \u201cGood Morning America\u201d a ratings shot in the arm.
For now, though, a beloved tradition is gone.
\u201cI have often said that even if I won the lottery I would continue to do what I do because I love doing it and because I love that dark January morning I spend every year on Wilshire Boulevard,\u201d Sargent said in her letter. \u201cYou have taken that away and I am saddened.\u201d<\/p>\n

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