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this year's Oscars
Why wait for Sunday? It's Russell and Nicole.
By Thomas J. Watson
Who will win an Oscar? What will be this year's top picture?
To learn the official winners we'll all have to wait until Sunday night, when ABC airs the 74th Annual Academy Awards, hosted for the fourth time by comedienne Whoopi Goldberg.
But we're willing to make some wagers.
We're picking Russell Crowe from "A Beautiful Mind," Nicole Kidman from "Moulin Rouge," Ian McKellan from "Lord of the Rings" and Jennifer Connelly from "A Beautiful Mind," along with "A Beautiful Mind" director Ron Howard.
The award for Best Picture of the Year will go to "A Beautiful Mind."
Our picks are not just seat-of-the-pants guesses, based on personal favorites or the general buzz that traditionally builds each year in the week prior to the Academy Awards.
There some methodology behind them, and for that credit goes to Initiative Media-North America.
The giant media buying service recently conducted an online poll in which 500 adults were asked to choose their picks from among this year's nominees.
Those were their choices, and we think they are on target.
Of these participants, 60 percent listed the Academy Awards as their favorite awards program; 42.2 percent said they definitely plan to watch the Awards on Sunday evening.
What we found interesting about the poll, and what would appear to give the findings greater weight, is that the chosen winners were all clear favorites, well ahead of the other contenders.
Of course, the closed-club membership of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences weighs a number of factors and interests in coming up with their choices, and it's an unpredictable group of artisans and craftsmen if ever there was one.
So we'd expect the outcome of their votes to be far less predictable, with at least one surprise to watch for Sunday night.
Also, like so many people in media, we'll be watching how the show does in ratings.
Academy Award ratings tend to rise and fall with the popularity of the movies that are up for Oscars that year.
In 1998, when the very popular "Titanic" was expected to win best picture, the ratings zoomed to a 34.9/63.
By contrast, the odds-on-favorite the prior year was the more erudite "The English Patient," and the household scores fell to a 27.4/51.
Last year’s telecast, in which "Gladiator" won, was the lowest-rated on record, delivering a 26.2 household rating and 40 share of audience, off 10 percent from the 29.2/49 of a year earlier.
Yet, the Oscars being the Oscars, it was the still highest-rated entertainment program of the year, predictably drawing a a heavily female-skewing audience as the "the Super Bowl for Women."
While this year’s films do not include a "Titanic" size mega-hit, they do include five relatively popular titles, including "A Beautiful Mind," "The Lord of the Rings," "In the Bedroom," "Gosford Park" and "Moulin Rouge."
Whether the show tops last year's ratings is a guess at this point, but one who thinks it will do well is Ira Sussman, executive vice president of IM Futures, the research division of Initiative Media-North America.
"The Academy Awards, like the Olympics and possibly one or two other events, are an American TV tradition," says Sussman.
"The show is typically a positive, feel-good type of program, a program people often watch together. And, of course, since Sept. 11, this group-experience type of show has been even more popular. All things considered, we expect the Awards to do very well for the advertisers."
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Recent Ratings Trends for the Academy Awards |
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| Year | Best Picture | HH Rtg. /Sh |
A18-34 | A18-49 | A25-54 | A50+ |
| 1996 | Braveheart | 30.3/55 | 17.2 | 18.6 | 20.6 | 26.8 |
| 1997 | English Patient | 27.4/51 | 15.3 | 16.5 | 18.2 | 23.7 |
| 1998 | Titanic | 34.9/63 | 23.2 | 24.2 | 25.7 | 26.5 |
| 1999 | Shakespeare in Love | 28.6/48 | 16.2 | 18.8 | 21.0 | 25.1 |
| 2000 | American Beauty | 29.2/49 | 16.5 | 19.1 | 21.1 | 25.1 |
| 2001 | Gladiator | 26.2/40 | 16.2 | 17.8 | 19.4 | 22.5 |
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Source: Nielsen Media Research |
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March 21, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
-Thomas J. Watson is a Los Angeles writer and a contributor to Media Life.
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