Award – COOPER GENERAL NEWS

The Oscars are Hollywood’s biggest night out, but fewer and fewer people outside of that circle are attending the event.

Last Sunday, the audience for the annual Oscars show dropped to a new low. According to Nielsen data, 10.4 million people watched which film took home the best picture award. That’s a nearly 56% decrease from the 23.6 million viewers who turned on their televisions for the show last year.

The Academy’s third consecutive hostless show scored a 2.12 rating for adults between 18 and 49, a key demographic for advertisers, down 60% from 2020.

The decline in both metrics is not entirely surprising, given that awards shows have generally seen a decline in viewership over the past few years. And only a few of the nominees were considered mainstream as the cinemas have largely been closed for a year due to the pandemic.

The Emmy Awards, which aired in September, had the lowest attendance for such a ceremony in the history of the television academy. The show only drew 5.1 million viewers, according to Nielsen, which is a 14% decrease from last year’s event.

The Grammys also saw astounding declines. This year’s awards show drew 9.23 million viewers, a 51% decrease from 18.69 million who chose the program in 2020.

Do people get bored at big awards shows or do they just look at each other differently?

Some argue that the flood of too many live awards ceremonies has saturated the market and made world-class awards shows like the Grammys, Emmys, and Oscars less exciting for viewers.

The Golden Globes, Video Music Awards (VMAs), Billboard Music Awards, Country Music Awards, BET Awards, People Choice Awards, Critics Choice Awards, and countless other ceremonies have been televised in recent years. With so little curation, it wouldn’t be surprising if viewers felt tired.

Not to mention, younger viewers, many of whom have cut cables, aren’t as willing to watch the traditional 16-20 minute commercials per hour that come with a live TV broadcast. A three-hour show like the Oscars can be an hour’s worth of advertising.

There are also some who complain that Hollywood uses its awards shows to make political and social statements. Regina King, who opened the Oscars on Sunday, used her time to point out how Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of three charges last year in the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed black.

“Now I know a lot of you at home will reach for your remote when you feel like Hollywood is preaching to you, but as a mother of a black son, I know the fear so many live with and no, the amount of fame or wealth changes that, “she said.

Then there are the nominees themselves. Nielsen’s data shows that more people were hired in the years that certain, more commercially popular films were nominated. The 2019 ceremony, which reached 29.6 million viewers, became nominees from popular films such as “Black Panther”, “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”, “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “A Star is Born”.

Even a decade ago, when Avatar, Up, Inglorious Basterds, District 9, The Hurt Locker and The Blind Side were nominated for best picture, ratings reached 41.6 million.

Of course, there is a chance that people might watch these awards shows, but they might see the programs differently. The Nielsen data does not include numbers for viewers who have chosen to watch one of the top awards shows on streaming platforms.

Dan Rayburn, a media and streaming analyst, said one obstacle is that the streaming industry has not yet agreed on a set definition of viewer. Each streaming service has a different method of reporting how many people have seen a particular movie, TV show, or live program. This can make it difficult to make comparisons between platforms and between those platforms and traditional cable providers.

Oscars 2021 coverage by CNBC

Read more about this year’s Academy Awards:

LONDON – The organization that awards the UK equivalent of the Oscars has suspended a celebrity actor and director weeks after receiving one of its main awards after 20 women accused of sexual assault, sexual harassment and bullying.

Producers, actresses and production assistants said actor Noel Clarke secretly filmed auditions where they were naked, fondled or forcibly kissed them, and sent unsolicited intimate pictures. The testimonies were detailed in an extensive synopsis that The Guardian published on Thursday evening.

The 45-year-old Clarke grew up in London and established himself in the 2000s as an actor on the television series “Doctor Who”. In Great Britain he is known as a filmmaker and performer for his trilogy “The Hood” about the life of teenagers in West London and for the TV police dramas “Bulletproof” and “Viewpoint”. His production company, Unstoppable Film & Television, has made more than 10 films and television shows.

According to The Guardian, Mr. Clarke denied all allegations made by his lawyers, with the exception of one episode in which he was accused of making inappropriate comments on a woman. He said he later apologized on the case.

A spokesman for artist management agency 42 M&P said it stopped representing Mr Clarke in April. Other efforts to contact Mr. Clarke and his agents were not immediately successful.

Sexual harassment allegations in the film industry have surfaced in recent years following revelations in the New York Times about Harvey Weinstein that touched the #MeToo movement. Mr Clarke is one of the first prominent actors to face such allegations in the UK.

In a statement to The Guardian, Mr. Clarke said: “In a 20 year career I have put inclusivity and diversity at the forefront of my work and have never filed a complaint against me.”

“If anyone who has worked with me has ever felt uncomfortable or disrespectful, I sincerely apologize,” said Mr. Clarke, denying any sexual misconduct or misconduct and dismissing the allegations as false.

The extent of the possible ramifications for Mr Clarke became clear on Friday when ITV television took the unusual step of saying in a statement that it would not air the finale of “Viewpoint,” a drama starring the actor, on its main channel Friday night because of the allegations against him.

Mr Clarke was recently awarded the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, commonly known as BAFTA, the Award for Great Britain’s Outstanding Contribution to Cinema at its annual ceremony earlier this month, despite being made aware of the allegations almost two weeks ago the ceremony.

BAFTA said in a statement Friday that it had received emails accusing him of sexual misconduct in the days following the announcement that Mr Clarke would receive the award.

The allegations, the organization said, were either anonymous accounts or second- or third-hand accounts through intermediaries, adding that they would have reacted differently if the statements had come directly from the prosecutors.

“Names, times, dates, productions or any other details were never given,” BAFTA said. “If the victims had been registered with The Guardian, the award would have been suspended immediately.”

BAFTA, which previously honored Mr. Clarke with the Rising Star Award in 2009, said in an earlier statement released shortly after the article was published that it would cancel his award and membership in the Academy “immediately and until further notice “suspended.

The Guardian report cited nearly two dozen women in the film industry who said they had suffered a range of ill-treatment, including unwanted physical contact, groping and forced kissing, and unwanted sexual behavior on the set, including eight on the nudes.

Norwegian film producer Synne Seltveit said Mr Clarke slapped her buttocks in 2015 and later sent an unwanted explicit sexual image. Actress Gina Powel said Mr Clarke exposed her in a car and later fondled her in an elevator in 2015 as well. Anna Avramenko, an assistant The film director said Mr Clarke kissed her violently on the set in 2008 and tried several times after the incident.

Helen Atherton, art director on “Brotherhood,” which is part of “The Hood” trilogy, said Mr. Clarke violated the norms for ethical filming of sex and nude scenes, including hiring a non-professional actress to do one Play scene in which intimate parts of their anatomy were visible.

In recent years, as television and film productions grapple with the effects of the #MeToo movement, “intimacy coordinators” have become more common on the set. Your job is to make sure that sex scenes do not endanger or exploit the performers. In recent British and Irish shows like “It’s a Sin” and “Normal People”, intimacy coordinators have been added to their crew.

On screen, the plots of some recent British hits like “Sex Education” and “I May Destroy You” have raised questions of sexual consent.

British actress and writer Michaela Coel, who created “I May Destroy You,” in which she plays a young Londoner investigating her own rape, said in a statement she supported the women who accused Mr. Clarke.

“Talking about these incidents takes a lot of effort because some people call them ‘gray areas’. However, they are far from gray, ”said Ms. Coel.

“These behaviors are unprofessional, violent, and can irreparably destroy a person’s perception of themselves, their place in the world, and their career.”

In his speech at the BAFTA Awards earlier this month, Black Mr Clarke dedicated his award to “the underrepresented person who sits at home believing they can do more.”

“This is especially for my young black boys and girls out there who never believed this could happen to them,” said Mr. Clarke.

He added, “Hopefully people will see that I’ve been trying to make changes in the industry.”

The British Academy has been repeatedly criticized for the lack of diversity in its nominee list and announced a number of changes to its nomination and award process over the past year.

For this year’s awards, BAFTA’s 6,700 voting members had to undergo unconscious bias training and watch each nominated film before they could cast their ballots for each category – an attempt to deter voters from focusing on the most hyped films.

In Friday’s statement, BAFTA said it had asked individuals to show their accounts and identify themselves.

“We very much regret that women have felt unable to give us the kind of firsthand testimony that has now appeared in The Guardian,” it said. “Had we received this, we would never have presented the award to Noel Clarke.”