Just The Good Parts

Last night was the Oscars, which always represents an internal debate for me over whether or not to bother watching them. On the one hand, I love movies. On the other, I can't stand award shows and the self-congratulatory nature of them. But in the end, since I think "Family Guy" is really funny, I figured I should tune in and support Seth MacFarlane, who I knew would get blasted for his performance no matter what he said or how he actually did. At least, that was the plan. The problem is that the producers of the Oscars appear to be frustrated football fans who were mad ABC didn't have the the Super Bowl this year, because the preamble for the Oscars was as interminable as it is on Super Sunday. I turned to the right channel at the time the guide told me to with every intention of watching the show but when I got there they were still doing the red carpet pre-show. Since I don't care about fashion I changed the channel, landed on a different show which kept my attention for the next 15 minutes, which of course triggered something else in my brain, so I started working on that, got distracted, forgot about the Oscars, turned on the Celtics game and by the time the game was over I figured I had missed so much of the show it wasn't even worth tuning in at that point. Maybe next year.

The good news for me is that I live in 2013, when everything which happens on TV is put on the web almost immediately. (No one is going to put the entire Oscar ceremony on the web, but that is actually for the best.) The only difference between the Oscars and any other TV show is that the Oscars have a very small window in pop-culture, which means you need to see the uploads as soon as possible or it's not even worth the effort. Fortunately, I have a fast internet connection so this morning I was able to click a few links, read which movie won which award, watch a few quick clips to see all the high points, heard all the best jokes and made myself aware of the moments which had everyone talking before I had finished my morning tea. Basically, it was just as good as watching the broadcast only I didn't have to sit through hours of awards I don't care about, hear speeches which ran too long and suffer through stretches where nothing interesting happened. Honestly, it was kind of great and I'm thinking of doing it that way with all award shows in the future. And if a lot of people decide to do it this way and skip the show for the online highlights the next morning the producers will have no one to blame but themselves.

As I said, I was on the fence about the show and the fact that the pre-show shenanigans ran so long ended up being the deal-breaker. This is becoming a disturbing pattern. I have noticed the trend in the last few years is to have very lengthy pre-shows which are almost as long as the actual show itself and while I don't know who it was that first decided this was a good idea, I would like them to know the rest of us would like to disagree with them. Last weekend's All-Star starting line-ups took an hour to get through and yesterday's Daytona 500 pre-race coverage was just as lengthy. As a result I tuned in well after the game and race had started because I didn't want to sit through it all. I feel like the problem is the pre-game shows for football manage to pull in decent ratings, so these TV executives probably assume people just like pre-game shows, when the reality is we just want to watch football and there aren't many alternatives for entertainment at 11 AM on a Sunday. Most of the audience has tuned in just to hear who appears on the injury report so as to adjust our fantasy football line-ups accordingly and then we tolerate the rest of the show while counting down until 1 o'clock. Believe me, if there was something else to watch which didn't involved Shannon Sharpe, most people would do that instead.

Of course, today's news stories are all about good the ratings for this year's telecast are which makes me look like I'm alone on this issue, but I bet they are still lower than what they could be based on taking too long to get to the show. I think the key thing for these TV producers is to remember that in this day and age people's attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. Thanks to over-stimulation people can only watch the same thing for about 3 hours, no natter how amazing it may be. When you are burning up half their attention span asking people what they are wearing and then having huge gaps filled with awards for Best Key Grip you can't be surprised when people start looking for something else to entertain them. And not only was the red carpet show stupid, it went long. The time the guide said the Oscars were actually going to start appeared to be nothing more than a suggestion. (That is another thing NFL pre-game shows have going for them - we know exactly the second they are going to end.) Without a specific time I was left to just keep tuning and out and each time I checked out something on another channel there was a chance I wouldn't come back, so when it finally happened no one could claim any great surprise. It's like anything else, really - if you want people to watch your show, don't make it harder for them by burying it behind two hours of people walking down a carpet having their picture taken. That crap is boring, you're up against 400 channels and I'm pretty sure there is a game on somewhere - when ratings are the name of the game the last thing you want to do is encourage people to start flipping around.