Sunday, March 21, 1999
Sunday show seems to be inspired idea
BY JACK GARNER
Gannett News Service
Having the Academy Awards ceremony at 8:30 p.m. today makes so much sense, why did they wait 71 years to do it? By staging the granddaddy of all award shows on a Sunday instead of the traditional Monday, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences accomplishes several things:
• Allows ABC to make more use of a longer prime time, which begins at 7 p.m. instead of 8 on Sundays. ABC can present its regular Barbara Walters special at 7, go on the air at 8 with its own preliminary show and still get Oscar events underway at 8:30. The old Monday night Oscars typically began at 9 p.m. after Ms. Walters' show.
• Lets viewers along the densely populated East Coast be awake when the best picture winner is named, perhaps well before midnight. Since the idea of the Oscars has always been to promote the movies, it's best they push them when audiences are awake.
• Gives audiences more of what they expect on Sundays - big TV events. (The Super Bowl is held on a Sunday.) It also gives viewers all weekend to look forward to the show.
• Allows moviemakers time to participate since Sundays are typically off-days in the industry.
• Reduces traffic jams in Los Angeles. “This is going to be a piece of cake on a Sunday,” an official with the Los Angeles Police Department told Variety.
Oscars were originally awarded during Thursday night ceremonies, but the industry shifted to Monday in 1959, in response to theater owners who said Mondays were the slowest nights at movie theaters.
Last weekend, not one Oscar nominee turned up on the weekly list of the 10 top-grossing movies. Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line, Life Is Beautiful and Elizabeth slipped off the list weeks ago, and Shakespeare in Love disappeared last weekend.
This is quite a turnaround from 1998's Oscar weekend, when Titanic was No. 1 at the box office and Good Will Hunting and As Good As It Gets were still pulling in multiplex crowds. When the Oscars were given out, the major nominees — most of which had been released in December — were still considered hot at the box office.
The big grosser among this year's nominees, Saving Private Ryan, earned most of its money last summer. The Oscar-related reissue, which turned up in theaters in February, merely added enough to top the $208 million mark and make it the top-grossing movie released in 1998.
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