What the Oscars can learn from the Golden Globes disaster

The New York Times

The Academy Awards are nearly two months away, on April 25, so the Oscar producers have plenty of time to learn from the Globes' mistakes. Among Kyle Buchanan's suggestions: Do a soundcheck with each nominee. "Clearly, some more robust preshow prep is necessary: If you’ve already got the stars on standby, keep drilling them offscreen until they know their cue to come in. (And send them better cameras and microphones, when possible.)," he says. "An acceptance speech ought to begin with emotion, not technical difficulties." But Don't do improv comedy. "The Golden Globes booked two sets of consummate vampers — the Saturday Night Live vets Maya Rudolph and Kenan Thompson, and the Barb and Star leads Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo — but each duo’s improvised patter only made a ramshackle show feel even more chaotic. Improv comedy works better as a palate cleanser during a tightly scripted ceremony, and it feels perverse to let comedians churn through show time in pursuit of a punchline when some of the biggest winners then have their speeches quickly curtailed by wrap-it-up music," Buchanan. He also suggests having the winners not sit down. "Still, some of that glamour is gummed up when the actors don’t even bother to get off the couch when they win a major televised prize," he says. "If the Oscars are forced into remote acceptance speeches, they should at least encourage the winners to rise to the occasion by standing up — it’ll feel less like a casual Zoom that way. (And if I can figure out how to balance my laptop on a stack of shoeboxes while videoconferencing, then so can celebrities.)" Finally, Buchanan says the Oscars should lean in on having big commercials, like the Super Bowl. "The Super Bowl has managed to turn its larded length into a feature, not a bug: It’s the rare show where people tune in specifically to see what will happen during the commercials," he says. "The Oscars ought to seize the same opportunity, stocking each ad break with teasers for some of the year’s biggest movies. ABC could guard against a Globes-like ratings drop if its parent company Disney promised first footage from films like West Side Story and the forthcoming Marvel entries The Eternals and Shang Chi, and other studios ought to follow suit."