The television broadcast of the 94th edition of the Oscar Awards had a rating of 15.36 million viewers according to Nielsen, which represents an improvement of 5.5 million people compared to the previous year in which there was a hybrid broadcast in the face of a moment of uncertainty due to the pandemic, at that time it had a historical low in audience, with 9.85 million people watching it in the United States; however, far from those golden times of the Titanic when about 55 million people saw the awards.
During this year’s gala, Will Smith hit Chris Rock on stage after the comedian made a joke about the actor’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, the act became a media phenomenon with more than 25 thousand mentions on Twitter Immediately after what happened and of course, it reached everyone’s phones, there were memes, gifs and hundreds of journalistic notes, of course there was much more talk about Smith’s reaction than about the winning film.
Morbidity has triumphed in this generation accustomed to immediacy and of course the slap is much more relevant than the background: knowing the best films of the year according to a group of specialists. Anyway… when I think about it, I regret that the transformation of media attention is so ephemeral, so easy and so banal. In any case, the slap opens multiple debates about freedom of expression and violence.
Although, on the other hand, I consider that the interest has always been the same, the only thing that changes is the channel, before the transmission of the Oscars, hours were spent prior to meeting the worst and best dressed and the partner of each one of the attendees.
Until a few years ago, a live event on television was enough for thousands of people to be aware of what was happening as if that were the only thing that was happening at that moment in the world, so we talked about Miss Universe, a musical, the premiere of a movie or a football game. At present, with the vast diversity of content on platforms and the Internet, very few television events are relevant and are the subject of massive conversation, such as the most recent Oscar Awards, of course with the respective scandal.
The prizes will have to be generalized (as they have done little by little), so that they are of interest to the new generations because if not, who will be interested in what the prizes contain if they do not include the premieres of Netflix or its favorite platform.
The Awards will be remembered for the multiple mentions of support for Ukraine, which is in a warlike conflict with Russia, and for the statements made by Penélope Cruz a few hours before the broadcast, which spoke of her experience with Harvey Weinstein, accused on multiple occasions of sexual harassment.
Time will decide if these awards will have a future, if they will have to change their format or if they will be reduced to scandals.