THB #683: Industry Tipping Point - Pt 1, What's Wrong?

This is one of those pieces that I really don’t want to be writing… but I can’t seem to escape it.

Awards events are in trouble.
Independent Film is in trouble.
Festivals are in trouble.

And like the Legacy media companies, faced with flipping their Linear television businesses to Streaming, these organizations seem unwilling to make the very much-needed transition to whatever might be next, fearful of losing what they already have, even if what they have is showing clear signs of serious and unrelenting shrinkage.

Ironically, what troubles a lot of the areas that are having all kinds of troubles are also directly connected to progress in how the world engages with filmed entertainment.

Awards

The Oscars are not the only award show crapping the bed in terms of viewership. The Emmys haven’t seen 10 million viewers since 2017. The Grammys, the #2 to The Oscars, hasn’t seen 20 million viewers since, again, 2017. The Golden Globes, whether a scummy non-profit or a scummier for-profit, also last saw 20 million viewers in 2017. And The Oscars last saw 20 million in 2020, 30 million in 2019, and 40 million in 2014.

The media keeps obsessing on the trees of each season, but It is wrong in almost every way. That said, in spite of being led by some of the smartest, most clever film industry professionals alive today, The Academy also loses perspective, trying the same things over and over and expecting different results. Insanity. But more important, failure.

In the 8 years since 2017 - the last sign of robust health for these awards shows - cable subscriptions in America have gone from 96.3 million to 68.7 million. That’s a 30% drop. Steep! But the viewership for Oscar, for instance, has dropped 40%, even using what I believe to be inflated figures for Sunday night’s show. Grammy’s are off 41%. Emmys, based on this last oddly-timed show, are off by more than half.

So trying to blame cord cutting is to offer one factor, but not a significant enough one to be the primary narrative.

I hate a lot of the suggestions that wannabe know-it-alls offer about how to “fix” Oscar. But this is what we know… they put on a very similar show every year, more than 7 weeks after the end of the year in film they are allegedly celebrating, following 3 other televised (and minimally watched outside of the industry) movie award shows, and they focus on a comedic host, music performances, and very rarely the movies that are nominated, unless it is one of the highest grossers, because they imagine that this will somehow boost the ratings.

The same formula, over and over. And while we can try to figure out what the hell went so wrong in the last 5 years, the same results… at the 5-year mark… and really, at the 10-year mark, and then the 15-year mark.

We live in a a 24/7/365 world now, for better or worse. It isn’t going away.

But I have to say, the Academy Board of Governors… they are much more likely to be be praying that Netflix or Apple will come along and pay them to keep doing the Oscar show exactly as they have done it for decades, less concerned about ratings and earning back the money than owning the #1 non-sports television event of each year. Don’t innovate, replicate.

I actually believe, strongly, that the aloof nature of Oscar is an important part of the brand. So I am not looking to turn it into a game show or something wildly different. The differences I would suggest are about how Oscar is presented to the public.

Change requires change.

Independent Film

I think the world of Sean Baker as an artist, but he is a little misguided in the detail work on what is happening in exhibition. The reality is that independent film distributors are getting access to more screens more often than ever before, as The Majors have abandoned a lot of the year’s slots.

It’s not that a shit-ton of movies are not being made independently. Here is a simple stat for you to chew on.

In 2014, there were 122 new films released that ended up running on 1000 screens or more. 85 of those were from The Majors (including their Dependents) and just 37 were from Independent distributors.

In 2024, there were 139 new films released that ended up running on 1000 screens or more. Sounds good, eh? But there has been a massive shift, in that just 64 of these films came from The Majors and 75 were from Independent distributors.