News
Oscar Balloting Complications
By Robert Marich
Sept. 1, 2009 – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences is getting fancy in its best picture Oscar balloting, and it’s not clear if this will produce less dreary dramas as winners.
AMPAS says it will institute a “preferential” voting system to pick the best picture. In the past, this system was used only to select nominees in the category. Expanding preferential voting comes on the heels of enlarging the field of best picture nominees to 10, from five.
In the preferential system, voters rank their top three choices one, two and three—instead of selecting three with equal weight. “With 10 nominees, the preferential system is one that best allows the collective judgment of all voting members to be most accurately represented,” says in a press release.
Marketing to Moviegoers is not so sure. The preferential system is credited – or blamed – with leaving The Dark Knight off best picture nominees in 2008. It’s believed the acclaimed surreal translation of the Batman comic book property was undercut by receiving few #1 votes in preferential balloting for nominations, though was probably a popular #2 and #3 choice.
Another drawback is that, in a field of 10 nominees, any film that receives one more than 10% of the first place votes could win best picture, even if it received no other votes. Thus, in theory a best picture winner could be passed over by one vote short of 90% of AMPAS voters.
Enlarging the field to 10 pictures for best picture is seen as an attempt to boost sagging TV ratings for the Oscars telecast, which is a big money machine for AMPAS. While bringing in more pictures into the conversation, the enlargement risks diluting the awards.
When heavy drama or low-grossing indie films dominate the best picture field, Oscar telecast ratings suffer, as was the case when Chicago won for 2002. Ratings are high when popular films lead, such as when Titantic won for 1997.
For full text, click link below:
www.oscars.org/press/pressreleases/2009/20090831a.html
www.marketingmovies.net/news/serious-fare-to-chill-oscar-telecast/
www.marketingmovies.net/chapters/chapter-6-publicity/