91st Academy Awards can only be saved by morbid curiosity

Quartz

Sunday's host-less ceremony looks poised to fall to another record-low viewership. "With no host, an underwhelming slate of films, and the entirety of Hollywood upset over its many planning debacles, the Oscars very well may be a train wreck this year," says Adam Epstein. "The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences should hope so—maybe then people will actually tune in." Perhaps, he says, all the negative headlines will drum up morbid curiosity in the ceremony. "The Oscars’ best shot at a ratings rebound is to lean into the shoddiness, embrace the fiasco of it all," says Epstein. "Cut off more speeches mid-sentence! Make the entire thing a shameless Marvel’s Avengers crossover promotional event! Give Vice best picture! If, come Monday morning, the Oscar TV ratings miraculously recovered from its decades-long nosedive, it’ll probably be because the show was like a car accident you couldn’t look away from. And then the Academy will finally have found the formula to make the Oscars great again: ensure they’re as disastrous as possible."

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