Daily Verse | 1 Chronicles 22: 19
Now devote your heart and soul to seeking the Lord your God.

It’s Tuesday, my friends. When people tell me to get in shape I think, “round is a shape.”

The Academy Awards was this past Sunday. I know, right? I didn’t hear about them either until I saw the news Monday morning. And the news about the Oscars wasn’t all that positive. In fact, it was downright pitiable—if you pity the rich and hope they don’t lose their homes in Beverly Hills.

The prestigious awards show drew an average of 9.8 million viewers for ABC on Sunday, according to early Nielsen numbers. That’s 58% below the ratings from last year’s show, the previous lowest-rated Oscars, which brought in in 23.6 million viewers.

The show remains one of the most-watched broadcast events, but its viewership represents a steep drop from what the show used to bring in. Just seven years ago, the Oscars nabbed more than 40 million viewers.

An almost 60 percent drop in viewers! Gee, what could have caused their ratings to crater? Let’s see what the analysts at CNN think.

So why did the Oscars lose so much of its audience? For a myriad of reasons.

Oh good. Someone with some solid information about to break it all down for us.

Ratings for awards shows across the board have suffered during the pandemic: Viewership for the Emmys, Grammys and Golden Globes have all plummeted lately.

Got it. The pandemic. See, all the other shows have lost viewers during the pandemic while everyone is locked down at home, ergo, the Academy Awards lost viewers. This is called the I’m Inferring Why the Oscars Lost Viewers Because I Have a Deadline Fallacy.

If high schools actually taught something useful, like logic, you would know that Correlation does not imply Causation.

The Oscars may have also struggled since many of the films nominated for major awards weren’t well known to general audiences. Hollywood held back many of its biggest films, hoping audiences would return to theaters later this year and in 2022. The Oscars are a kind of ad for going to the movies, and a lot of people haven’t been able to do that in more than a year because of the pandemic.

So you admit that the Oscars are a big promotional event to sell more tickets to the movies but people haven’t been able to do that because of the … pandemic. We already did that one.

As for the show itself, the reviews were decidedly mixed.

Like this one: “Oscars 2021 tortured viewers for more than 3 unbearable hours.“

OK, some of the fall off could be due to the pandemic and the, uh, pandemic and a terrible production. But sixty percent of likely viewers?

Nah.

What could it be? What could. it. be?

Ah, how about this? How about Normal Americans who don’t care about Hollywood anymore so they’ve stopped watching the self-licking lollipop called the Academy Awards? You know, those deplorables who live in fly-over country who are lectured by rich snobs about how morally horrid they are because of their white privilege and who rage about a president that half the country voted for?

Maybe that has something to do with it. Maybe?

Nothing like a bunch of overpaid elites who pretend they’re someone else for a living lecturing the guy who sits in a cube farm trying to make an honest wage to feed his family, put the kids through college, pay the mortgage, the car loan, the utilities and still have enough to take his wife out to the movies where they’re charged $12 a ticket, $7 for a bucket of popcorn and $4 for a less white Coke.

You want me to turn on the television and subject myself to that?

Yeah, no thanks.

I will grant one exception to all of that. During the show on Sunday, Tyler Perry was honored with the Academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. As I understand it, Perry is not only a creative genius, but he’s a sincerely humble man who has not forgotten his roots.

Viola Davis introduced Perry with glowing remarks. “Tyler Perry personifies empathy,” she said. “Tyler knows what it is to be hungry, to be without a home, to feel unsafe and uncertain. So when he buys groceries for 1,000 of his neighbors, supports a women’s shelter, or quietly pays tuition for a hard-working student, Tyler is coming from a place of shared experience.”

That was one bright spot in an otherwise forgettable awards program. It’s too bad more people didn’t get to see it.

But as they say: Get Woke, Go Broke.