Photo courtesy of Media Bistro

It probably comes as no surprise to most that an Oscar nomination usually means a big bump at the box office. I added “Hurt Locker” to my Netflix queue after it won best picture last year. According to The New York Times Carpetbagger blog, the average best picture winner over the last four years experienced a 22% increase in revenue after being named a nominee and an additional 15% jump following a win. You don’t even have to win!

What may come as a surprise, and it makes sense, is that nominating already popular films is big business for the Academy. There seems to be a direct correlation between how many viewers tune into the awards show and pre-Oscars box office figures for the nominees.

The most people to ever watch the Oscars? Maybe you remember “Titanic,” the highest grossing movie of all time (in a 2D world)? In 1995, when “‘Titanic” won best picture and Leo stole my heart, more than 55 million people tuned in to the Oscars.

Need another example? In 2008, when “No Country For Old Men” won Best Picture, fewer than 32 million viewers tuned in. “No Country for Old Men,” a low-budget, independently financed film only brought in around $50 million pre-Oscars.

I guess that explains why last year the Academy returned to nominating 10 films for best picture after more than a half-century of only nominating five. For every “The Kids Are Alright,” domestic gross $20 million, you need “The Social Network,” domestic gross $95 million. For every “Winter’s Bone” (???), domestic gross $6 million, you have “Inception,” $292 million. For every “The King’s Speech,” which took in around $26 million before the Golden Globes buzz, there’s “Toy Story 3,” domestic gross $415 million.

The 83rd Annual Academy Awards airs Sunday, Feb. 27, at 5 p.m. on ABC.

Note: Box office figures from BoxOfficeMojo.com

• The most recent Super Bowl was the most-watched telecast ever
• The Golden Globes saw a 14 percent increase from last year
• The Grammys saw an amazing 35 percent increase in viewership this year
• The Olympics were the second largest US Olympic audience ever, surpassed only by the Kerrigan/Harding miniseries of 1994

Coincidence? It’s easy to point out that the Super Bowl had the league MVP, two teams that were 13-0 at one point in the season and the Hurricane Katrina sub-plot. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to argue that the Golden Globes, too, benefited from the same things the Oscars did. But the Grammys? Did 35 percent more people really tune in to see Lady Gaga and Elton John perform together? And The Olympics? I think the strongest case can be made for them that something is to thank other than unusually great stories. Is that thing social media?

Local WCCO producer Gregg Litman recently wrote about social media being a big reason for the ratings surge and I agree. These huge cultural events used to make for good banter around the watercooler the next day, but now viewers gather around it during the show and it’s much more a communal experience. So is that the reason? Could it not be because more people are staying home more with tight budgets, watching the tube because it’s cheaper than going out to dinner and a movie? My colleague John Reinan points out that with the continuing fragmentation of media, people may now crave these big, communal events more than ever.   

The BNET Media story that I linked to in the first paragraph also points out that broadcasters of big events are likely to factor in “the social media effect” from now on and be likely to ask for major ad rate increases. When considering that, it’s amazing to think about how recently stories like “Super Bowl ads decreasing for the first time ever” and the whole “DVR, TIVO, On-Demand, etc. will be the demise of TV” were written. It’s been one heck of a three-month stretch or so for TV and I’m curious to know what you think - what’s the reason for it and can this continue?

Today Sid Ganis, the president of the MPAA, announced that the best picture category at the OSCARS would double up from the current five nominees to the seemingly self indulgent ten. He says it will make the race “more interesting and less cloistered” and may even make room for a “little one” (read: indie) or even (gasp!) a comedy. I’m not convinced his intentions are so pure.

Traditionally, the Acad tends to recognize serious dramas with genre pictures, comedies, movies that are hugely popular at the box office, documentaries, animated movies, and foreign pictures almost always missing the cut.

Take 2008 as a case study. The best picture nominees were Slumdog Millionaire, The Reader, Milk, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Frost/Nixon. The big guffaw came when both Wall-E and The Dark Knight were left out of the running. Both were of the best reviewed movies of the year and were, by any stretch of the imagination, better than the shameful, oscar-bait-holocaust-weepie The Reader. But they didn’t get nominated mainly because one made over 500 million at the US box office and the other was a cartoon.

So what does the expansion accomplish? The truth is that the move from five pictures to ten is merely a matter of money. What it does is try and boost box office revenues by giving the hugely profitable “Best Picture Nominee” tag to more movies. I try not to say this with any sort of bitter tone, at least not yet, because it is my hope that they will recognize  smaller movies that are of fantastic quality but limited scope, thus giving them a fighting chance at getting seen. Last year movies like “Man On Wire”, one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen and one about tight rope walking no less, “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”, romanian Christian Mungiu’s verite drama about abortion, Jonathan Demme’s “Rachel Getting Married”, or even the stark Sundance hit “Ballast”, all got the short end of the stick because of their limited releases and niche appeal.

Hopefully, this action will allow voters to take more risks and truly honor those pics that deserve to be called “Best Picture” regardless of genre, scale, risk, revenue, or appeal. Hopefully. Most likely it will lead to self congratulatory back patting by the purveyors of the mediocre and the status quo. Maybe that’s a little pessimistic of me. Yea for movies!