In 2014, viewership for the Academy Awards spiked. The show, also known as the Oscars, was hosted by comedian and talk show host, Ellen DeGeneres that year. That spike could presumably be because of DeGeneres’ popularity, but since then, the viewership for the show has been on a steady decline. The Hollywood Reporter observed that this past year’s Oscars gained the lowest viewership in the history of the program. However, despite the low viewership, it continues to draw a lot of attention.
An Academy Award holds the prestige of being the highest award one could achieve in Hollywood, and so the Oscars are often referred to as “Hollywood’s big night”. This suggests an innate spreadability. In their book, Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture, Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green define spreadability as being ““the potential – both technical and cultural – for audiences to share content for their own purposes, sometimes with the permission of rights holders, sometimes against their wishes” (3). Even if people no longer watch the show, it is still a relevant topic, and the events of the show are still widely known.
The Oscars have an innate spreadability in that even if people are not tuning in to watch it, they are still interested in the results and happenings of the show. Several news outlets and online journals post the winners the next morning so that people can still stay informed of the results without having to watch the program. Notable happenings also get very wide publicity. For example, in 2017, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway made a massive error when they announced La La Land for winning the Best Picture award instead of Moonlight, the true winner. The number of people who saw the mishap live on TV may not have been many, but very soon, the whole world knew about what had happened. While many people may not care enough about the Oscars to watch the show, they still regard it as being culturally important and so when errors like this occur on such grand events, word spreads and conversations arise.
Not only do errors and mishaps gain attention, purposeful messages do as well. Jenkins et al say that spreadability refers to “the attributes of a media text that might appeal to a community’s motivation for sharing material” (4). In 2016, the Oscars were hosted by Chris Rock, an African-American comedian. He addressed the #OscarsSoWhite movement and blatantly said “You’re damn right Hollywood is racist”. His confrontation to the racism in Hollywood sparked a lot of buzz. It was no longer just movie fans and pop culture consumers who were talking about this, anti-racism activists and anyone who was concerned with equality were also consuming and spreading this material. The “motivation” that Jenkins et al refer to is something broader than just movies. A similar occurrence happened this year, in 2018, when the program dealt with the issue of sexual assault in Hollywood and the #MeToo movement. The Oscars were no longer solely of interest to the typical viewers; feminists and many others now paid attention to the messages being propelled.
The Oscars may be losing viewers for the actual show itself, but its spreadability is very strong. The happenings of the show are still widely spoken about and its cultural importance remains. It is spreadable in its nature in that it draws many attention-grabbing elements. That, combined with its prestige and name, makes for a lot of conversation surrounding it. The spreadability of the Oscars makes for it to remain important and relevant, even if people are no longer watching the show as much as before. The conversation still continues.