Opinion: The Oscars Need More Air Time

The 93rd annual Academy Awards aired Sunday night and as usual, they ended on an awkward note because the last half or “third act” was incredibly rushed.

The broadcast usually runs from 7 p.m. CDT to 10 p.m. CDT. and as always, the last few awards end up being rushed due to trying to finish by 10 p.m. as the winners tend to take their time during their acceptance speeches.

They should be able to take as long as they would like because winning an Oscar is sometimes a once in a lifetime achievement. The Academy should work around the winners and allot for more time of their broadcast.

They have begun to work around them, as they said this year they were going to allow for more time during speeches. In the past, they have begun playing music as a sign for people to get off stage which rudely interrupts them or sometimes they even cut the microphone so they could no longer speak.

This was met with much backlash as audiences felt it was wrong and that the winners should be allowed more time. The Academy attempted to do that this year, but it ultimately backfired as they still were about to hit the 10 p.m. cutoff time and there were still awards left.

The major insult to celebrities of the night was the “in memoriam” segment. The producers decided since there were multiple people being honored, it was going to take some time so they should speed it up a bit.

However, there were some pretty significant Hollywood figures who died recently, so they did not want to just gloss over them and the end result audiences were left with was messy and frankly, insulting.

Were the people who did not have hardly any time less important or valuable than those who were? Would taking a longer time to read a photo and name on one person indicate to the audience that they should be more sad over their passing than one whose name and photo only lasted a second?

It was a failure on the part of the editors of the segment, but also on the board of the Academy, because they should simply know better that if they are going to have an “in memoriam segment,” all of those honored should have their name and image shown for an equal amount of time. It is simply respectful.

Although, to conclude with the final award of the night, Best Actor, being announced very quickly and allowing no time for any closing before the camera panned out to roll the credits,

was truly the straw that broke the Academy’s back.

Luckily the winner, Anthony Hopkins, was not present to give a speech so they avoided having to wait for him, but the audience also avoided the second-hand embarrassment of seeing him being rushed to get off stage.

Hopefully next year they will finally see how awful their timing has become and just pay the extra money for 30 more minutes of air time. What could it hurt?