Academy Defends Oscar Broadcast
Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences president Tom Sherak (pictured) is defending the Oscar broadcast: “You can say we failed,” he tells the current issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. “I’d say we still got 38 million people.” That’s a little like the NFL commissioner saying: “The teams in the Super Bowl only scored a combined 10 points. But we still got 100 million people.” In both cases you have a built-in audience regardless of whether the show sucks or not. But the Academy has a lot more control over what will happen on its show than the NFL does on its big event. Sherak, to continue the sports metaphor, chooses to punt.
