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AP PHOTO/MARK J. TERRILL
Host Billy Crystal performs onstage during the 84th Academy Awards in 2012.
year without fail: the Oscars are
too long, too boring, too white, too
bland. Last year, a New York Times
article added a new insult, wondering if Hollywood’s premier awards
institution had finally become “resistible.” Viewership has stalled in
the lusted-after 18-to-49 demographic. And desperate attempts to
lure the bloc back — for instance,
casting James Franco and Anne
Hathaway as co-hosts armed with
little experience but plenty of jokes
about texting — only make the
Academy seem more out of touch.
On the battleground for relevance that is Twitter, the Oscars are
also losing. More people watched
the Grammys than the Oscars in
2012 (for the first time since 1984),
and there were more tweets about
the Grammys too, thanks to the
show’s spry reorganization into a
Whitney Houston memorial service.
It’s not as if there had been
nothing to talk about: Billy Crystal
resurfaced as host after years off,
looking like a wax version of his
younger self (and, at one strange
point, appearing in blackface). Iran,
catalyst of so much online energy,
THE OSCAR ISSUE / HUFFINGTON / 02.10-17.13
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