By all accounts, the reason this whole new award thing started in the first place is because ABC had signed a new multi-year contract (12 years) to show the awards which started in 2016 and this past year's awards show was down in the ratings to 26.5 from 33.4 in 2017 and 34.00 in 2016. (One must note that ratings are down across the board in almost every network measurement the last few years. Even the Superbowl.)
But ABC executives went to AMPAS in a tizzy and said they had to do something. Shorten the show. Get films people like nominated somehow. They brought up the idea of the new picture category. Up the ratings by not televising some categories etc. Do something! Whatever. AMPAS was spooked.
Somehow they got AMPAS to agree to stop televising some of the awards and just showing a clip of them winning. They got them to announce a new award category for popular films without researching the members or even deciding how that would work.
By the way, if that was supposed to appeal to new audiences, why would it? Because it, in fact, just sounds like pandering. You won't nominate movies for Best Picture in the genres we like (specifically well-reviewed superhero films like The Dark Knight, or last year's Wonder Woman or this year's Black Panther) so we'll pander to you by giving you a special trophy.
If you recall the fact that The Dark Knight, and also WALL-E which received several critics Best Film of the Year prizes...the fact they were overlooked in the Best Film category in 2008 was why AMPAS suddenly instituted the "up to ten Best Film nominees" rules which was thought would then include more sci-fi, animated, acclaimed superhero films etc. into the mix.
Guess what? It did not.
As far as instituting a "Popular Film Achievement Award...remember when they gave awards to films that both critics and audiences actually liked? They used to give Best Picture winners to "popular" films. You know, like The Sound of Music, West Side Story, The Godfather, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Sting, The French Connection, Terms of Endearment, etc.
So in 2017 they gave the Best Picture Oscar to Moonlight over La La Land. Regardless of your feelings about either film, La La Land was popular and audiences saw it more than any other nominee. (Hidden Figures may have overtaken it after the awards.) Concerning movie audiences...Moonlight was not a popular film. Sure, it got good critical acclaim, but it's one in a long line of recent Best Picture winners that are among the bottom of the Best Picture lists for drawing audiences and box office. The highest rated Oscars of all time was when Titanic, a very popular and critically acclaimed film, was nominated and won. SO, can you blame audiences who tuned in to see La La Land win get turned off when it didn't?
In any event, I don't think the Oscars should try pandering to audiences to get viewership. The Oscars are different now for many reasons. THey were actually conceived to get the populace interested in Hollywood's products by showcasing their ideas of the best films of the year. The fact is, when I was growing up and watching them on TV, most everyone I knew hadn't seen these films. Maybe 2-3 if any. Watching the show was great to not only see movie stars that never or rarwely appeared on telelvision. You could also see clips of the films. Watching celebrities ands seeing film clips of the nominees is the least interesting thing about the Oscars nowadays. With a click of your computer you can see almost anything you want to in that regard. It's not really special.
And some of you noted the proliferation of awards shows. Even if it is the Oscars, when there are well over 100 groups giving out awards before that it gets really tiresome. And that doesn't include the myriad of film festivals giving out awards. It just dilutes the impact.
Also, these shows are spread out over three months which gives everyone time to analyze the importance of each one into numbness. This contributes to a sameness of winners which seems absurd when critics are always saying "art is subjective." Shouldn't that mean that every award, say, shouldn't go to Gary Oldman, for example?
So how AMPAS can ever evolve into something more exciting and worthy with it's awards is something people write about every single year.
THe only idea I ever heard of is something that would never happen because it would involve too many groups agreeing on a single thing and each group wants their own spot in the limelioght, eas evidence by critics giving out their best film nominations and or awards around Thanksgiving now, before many films even are screened or opened.
But that idea was to have "Awards Season" scheduled like the Olympics. A two-week period where every day there are film awards, perhaps starting with the critics, moving on to guilds etc. and the last night would be the Oscars. For one, each group could not be influenced by anyone else's award voting. There would be time to celebrate the achievements instead of the weeks of people trying to tear them down like the internet is wont to do and since the voting wouldn't be contingent on knowing what anyone else voted for weeks in advance...there would theoretically be differences.
An Atlantic article about this from when it was first announced:
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/08/the-oscars-new-rule-changes-are-terrible/567107/
