LOS ANGELES – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has employed a new strategy to engage younger moviegoers for the 98th Academy Awards ceremony by having presenters explain every 15 minutes to the viewers that they are handing out Oscar statues because it’s an award show, producers have confirmed.
“If great films are going to flourish, this year’s Oscar ceremony needs to grab hold of the attention of young viewers. But the moment any winner goes self indulgent, meandering acceptance speeches, we’ll lose out to TikTok almost immediately. So we’ve borrowed Netflix’s filmmaking approach and asked all presenters to look into the camera and loudly explain that this is an award show for movies, specifically the good ones,” said producer Mike Sweeney. “Sure, repeatedly interrupting the flow of the evening to remind the audience why celebrities are handing out statues to other celebrities will ruin the immersion of those who aren’t chronically online. But it was either this or have the winners announced via Amber Alert warnings, and most people have that feature turned off anyway.”
Some of the show’s writers admitted they felt retooling the show cheapened the accolades.
“I can’t believe we got Conan O’Brien to host the show again, and instead of pitching jokes we have to put all our creative energy into describing in great detail that the awards are divided into different categories and having presenters talk about themselves in the third person,” said staff writer Greg Carter. “I mean, the ‘in memoriam’ segment is going to take forever since we have to explain over and over what that means, and what death is, and that it’s not an award for dying.”
Network executives at ABC were looking forward to the new format.
“With presenters having to incessantly repeat who they are and what they’re doing here, we’ll tack on two hours more of runtime, which means we can sell twice as much advertising space. Think of all the Kalshi ads! Hell, read the definition of what a movie is from the dictionary for all we care,” said executive Brian Johnston. “If this works out, we’re totally overhauling next year’s Grammy Awards to take place entirely in a record store and explain how music can also exist on physical media.”
As of press time, stagehands have reportedly completed a massive 30-foot LCD screen that will play Subway Surfers during the acceptance speeches.
