Call it the Marion Cotillard Effect.
Few American moviegoers had heard of the French actress before she won the Academy Award last year for her performance in the art-house film "La Vie en Rose." That year also marked the lowest ratings ever for an Oscar telecast.
Publicly, executives of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and ABC, which has broadcast the show annually since 1976, shrugged off the sinking ratings. But privately, they began looking at ways to make the broadcast more popular. The economics are simple: Without a large TV audience, ABC would be unable to continue demanding lofty prices for commercial time during the show. Those commercial rates in turn affect the licensing fee the network pays the academy, its principal source of income.
"Movies that have been nominated in recent years have been critically acclaimed but many were too obscure for the mainstream moviegoer," said Shari Anne Brill, director of audience analysis for the ad-buying firm Carat. "Most moviegoers had never heard of these films, let alone seen them."
Widening the field of movies jockeying for the big prize from five to 10, as the academy announced Wednesday, should help attract more viewers, and potentially more advertisers to the show.
This year, amid one of the worst advertising recessions in decades, several sponsors bailed on the broadcast. The rate for a 30-second commercial in the Oscar telecast dropped to below $1 million for the first time since 1998, according to the Nielsen Co.
Sid Ganis, president of the academy, said Wednesday that the motivation to change the rules was not concerns over ratings.
"That was not the purpose but, of course, there is the hope that there'll be even more interest in the Oscars around the world," Ganis said. "We have to think about that with the other side of our business. The show is important to us, but we are not going to turn ourselves upside down and backwards to accommodate the ratings."
ABC executives discussed with the academy how to make the broadcast more popular with a larger audience, according to people familiar with the talks.
The show was given a new look and tone this year by producers Bill Condon and Laurence Mark and was hosted by "X-Men" star Hugh Jackman, who brought a song-and-dance act along with a "sexiest man alive" pedigree to the show. The ratings were somewhat higher than the 2008 low, but academy members nonetheless concluded that more than a cosmetic fix was needed.
