Carpet Bagging the Red Carpet: Live Blogging The 2015 Oscars®: Pre-Game

 

It’s Oscar Sunday!  As I type, Hollywood’s royalty, gentry, serfs, and court jesters are preparing for the second most harrowing live event of their lives.  (The First?  Hosting Saturday Night Live.  Heckling, via Internet and smartphones.)

We here at Stately Beat Manor are preparing as well.  I’ll be your host this evening, liveblogging the event as it happens!  (If my aging cable box holds out.  I may have to stream them…or watch it backstage.)

So… it’s now 2:50 PM ET.  They officially start at 7 PM.  The show begins usually at 8:30.

As a kid, the Oscars were always on Mondays.  Before the show, Barbara Walters would have an hour special where she would interview three celebrities.  Then the show would start at 9, go over the time limit, and people complained.   Me, as a kid, realized…  get rid of Walters and start it at 8 PM!  Three hours to hand out the awards!  Eventually, they did, and it still ended late.  Then I got to wondering, why not show it on Sundays, with four hours of Prime Time?  So they did… but does the show start at 7/4?  Nope.  It starts at 8:30 PM!  90 minutes are wasted on the red carpet!  Seriously…  move that to the pregame…  say 5-7 PM, then go right into the show.  (Actually, ABC starts Oscar programming at 4PM.)  Program it like the Super Bowl.  Curtains rise at 7, you get 30 minutes of monologue or opening number, and then start handing out the naked men.  Four awards an hour.  Group them in pairs for presenters to make it more efficient:  supporting acting, writing, music, short film, documentary, makeup and costume, sound…   It might even be possible to do three of those doubles in one hour!  Each hour, there’s something glitzy.  Musical performance, tributes

Hey…  what do local affiliates on the West Coast show after the Oscars end at 8ish PM?  ABC should fill that with Jimmy Kimmel, live feeds from the parties, analysis, ending at 10 PM local time.  Which is 1 AM East Coast time.  Nine hours of Oscar programming!

Here’s an even better idea…. Oscar Week!  The week before, ABC would air specials about each category.  Interview the nominees, discuss the skill and art behind what they do, anecdotes, yadda yadda.  The major categories, you make it a two-hour special, ending with Best Picture on Saturday.  In a way, ABC would be programming this like the Olympics!  (And Hollywood studios would sponsor it by advertising coming attractions!)  Also, the Sunday before, ABC hosts a two-hour “In Memorium” special which features almost everyone, and directs to a special page at Oscars.org with detailed biographies.

Okay…  4:15.  I’m going to prep the other pages now.   Feel free to comment as I live blog.  Enter the time, so we can all keep track!  I’ll be back at 7 PM when the show starts!