Searching for the missing public: The Oscars are being held this Sunday and for the first time they will be entering the categories chosen by Twitter users

This article was translated from our Spanish edition using AI technology. Errors may occur due to this process. Opinion expressed by Businessman contributors are their own.

For a long time Oscar is one of the biggest events of the year. A televised gala ceremony where audiences can see the stars the world admires celebrate the best production of the year in a show that usually replaces winner announcements with increasingly politicized musical numbers and speeches.

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Until recently, winners in each category were chosen by members of each union (i.e., directors chose directors; actresses chose actresses, etc.), meaning that award-winning films and characters not necessarily a public favourite. ; in fact, they usually don’t. Maybe because of that, the event that was once luxurious has now lost its excitement and audience. The ceremonial transmission, which over the years reached an audience of around 40 million viewers, has been in loop for nearly a decade, with the lowest numbers over the last two editions: 18.9 million in 2020 and 10.6 million in 2021. don’t forget that the format of this last installment is different due to the pandemic).

Faced with a crisis, the Academy finally decided to take action: make the category chosen by the public .

This new category is called Fan Favorite Movie and selected by users using the hashtags #OscarFanFavorites and #Sweepstakes along with the name of the film they wish to vote for. held between February 14 and March 3. Titles must have been released during 2021 to participate and users can cast up to 20 votes per day or vote directly on the Academy site (open only to users located in the United States).

It’s not yet clear how the awards will be presented at Sunday’s ceremony, but among the films that could be shown are Spider-Man: No Way Home, Tick, Tick… ​​Boom and Cinderella . If successful, the dynamics can be extended to other networks, other categories, and other regions for future editions.

Since 2018, the Academy has been courting the idea of ​​integrating fan-voted categories; now it will finally happen. Is that enough to lure the missing public?

You can catch the 94th Academy Awards on Sunday, March 27 at 18:00 (CT).