Here's my verdict on this evening's host-free Oscar ceremony: From the standpoint of the folks who produce the telecast, this is about as good as the show can be.
When we think back on past memorable moments from ceremonies, what are we remembering? Well, a lot of what I recall are times when some win and acceptance speech provided a great, emotional few minutes…like Peter Finch's widow accepting for her deceased husband or Jack Palance being so charming in his thank-you remarks.
Fine…but the producers of the show don't make that happen. It's just like we can remember a thrilling moment in a baseball game when some batter hit a game-changing home run or an outfielder made an impossible catch and an even more impossible throw to home. Again, great…but the folks who covered that game and brought it to you on TV didn't make that happen.
Or we remember the Academy Awards show when some movie or star we dearly loved snagged a totally-unexpected win. That was thrilling but guess what? The producers of the show can't make that happen. They don't sit around and say, "Y'know, the show gets really dull around the two-hour mark. Let's give the Oscar for Best Sound to someone no one expects who'll thank all his dead relatives in an adorable way."
They have this problem: The awards are the awards and the winners are the winners. I don't know how you could give an award for Best Cinematography any faster or any other way than they did this evening. Some presenter has to make an entrance. He or she has to say something. They have to read the nominees. They have to announce the winner. The winner has to make his/her way to the stage and you have to give them time to say something. Then they have to exit and you get on to the new award.
It's simply going to take X minutes…and as we've just seen, people would get real angry if you tried to save 45 seconds and said, "Hey, let's give that one during a commercial break and just show the acceptance speech when we come back."
Getting back to our baseball analogy: If nothing happens in the third, fourth and fifth innings, it's beyond the telecast producers' power to make those innings interesting. And don't even think of editing them out.
There have also been some memorable times on Oscar shows because a host was very funny or because someone whipped up an incredible musical number using one of the nominated songs. But with the songs, the producers of the show are stuck with whatever's nominated and most of the nominees the last few years have not lent themselves to spectacular presentations. They're songs we almost never hear anywhere but in the films and we sometimes barely hear them in the films.
And while some hosts have been great, what this evening's show demonstrated is that maybe it ain't worth the risk of having one. It's not a necessity. A host tonight would have added 15-25 minutes to a show that was too long without one. If he or she wasn't funny — as some usually-funny folks haven't been in that tough, tough room — all the host does is make a long show longer.
I think we should stop viewing the Academy Awards (or the Emmys or the Tonys, etc.) as big variety shows and start thinking of them more like sportcasts. It's the televising of a game…and sometimes, games are boring. And sometimes, your favorites don't win and there's nothing the producers of the telecast can do to change that except maybe cut out the padding. They did that tonight and got a much better show than most folks expected. If you think they didn't, tell me what they could have done that was within the producers' power to do.