Oscars Pin Hopes on Chris Rock for Ratings

Luenell on Oscars Boycott: We Need White Actors to Speak Up Too
Photo Chris Rock, who will host the Oscars ceremony next week, on the set of his 2014 film Top Five. Credit Ali Paige Goldstein/Paramount Pictures

LOS ANGELES The last time Chris Rock hosted the Oscars, he was judged by many to be a bust.

Loud, snide and dismissive, he wasnt just a disappointment, wrote the USA Today critic Robert Bianco in 2005. He ranks up there with the worst hosts ever. Other reports noted that the audience for Mr. Rocks show had dropped by 5 percent, to about 42.2 million viewers, from the year before, when Billy Crystal did the honors.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the future.

It would take nine years for another host to beat Mr. Rocks audience. That was Ellen DeGeneres, who got 43.7 million viewers in 2014 and, measured against a larger population, she actually fell a bit short of his Nielsen ratings.

As for snide and dismissive, almost anything that gets the numbers up when Mr. Rock takes the Oscars stage on Sunday will most likely be fine with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which gives out the Oscars, and ABC, which broadcasts the show.

Returning after 11 years, Mr. Rock inherits a ceremony in crisis, as the academy grapples with a deeper problem than the television ratings: diversity.

Photo Credit Photograph by Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse, via Getty Images; Illustration by Andrew Sondern/The New York Times

For the second straight year Oscar voters snubbed minorities in the acting categories. Would-be viewers who are angry about that may not watch the telecast as a result. (Last year, the number of black viewers fell about 20 percent, according to Nielsen data.)

Others may be turned off by the crackle of racial politics around a show that they view as pure entertainment. (Cant we just enjoy a big TV event without being lectured? the conservative activist L. Brent Bozell III wrote about pleas for equality at last years ceremony.)

Quincy Jones, one of at least a dozen black celebrities lined up in recent weeks to appear at Sundays ceremony as presenters, had said this month that he would hand out a trophy only if given five minutes to address diversity. That would approximately match the length of last years opening musical number by Anna Kendrick, Jack Black and the ceremonys host, Neil Patrick Harris. A spokesman for Mr. Jones confirmed that he would appear, but declined to say whether he was promised added airtime.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, said last week in an email that his group and others were continuing to back what they call the White Oscars Tune-Out. They were also planning Oscar day protests in Hollywood and at ABC stations in New York, Washington, Detroit, Cleveland, Miami and Atlanta.

We fully expect the ratings numbers to be down, and much of that will be due to the pressure, Mr. Hutchinson said.

He dismissed recent steps by the academy to make its membership and governing boards more diverse as time-delaying, cumbersome and convoluted. The academys goal, he added, was to s****h lots of favorable PR, give the appearance of change and make the protest go away. Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the academys president, he said, had declined to meet with his organization or others to discuss further changes.

A spokeswoman for the academy declined to comment, and said neither Mr. Rock nor the shows producers, Reginald Hudlin and David Hill, would agree to be interviewed about plans for the ceremony.

The ratings numbers are of paramount concern to the academy, which derives the largest part of its income from the awards ceremony. Last year the audience fell 15 percent, to about 37.3 million viewers. At the same time, ABC has been raising prices for its ads; they now cost an average of $1.9 million to $2 million for a 30-second spot, up as much as 11 percent from a year ago, according to a report released by Kantar Media last week.

The report said ABC took in about $110 million from last years broadcast, up by almost half from $74 million in 2011, as rates jumped, and the network increased its advertising minutes during the show by about 25 percent, to 29 minutes and 45 seconds. By contrast, the 2015 Grammys had about $75 million in ad revenue last year, and the Golden Globes took in about $42 million, according to Kantar.

The academy receives roughly $110 million annually from the show, including fees related to ABCs domestic broadcast, separate income from distribution around the world, and other Oscar-related revenue. Assuring financial stability for the awards has become more critical for the academy, which last year sold about $350 million in bonds to support a new movie museum.

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Under a long-term contract, ABC has agreed to air the Oscars through 2020. But a ratings collapse of the kind that occurred in 2008 contributing to a 16 percent drop in ad revenue the next year could squeeze the network by reducing future advertising rates, and an Oscar-day boycott that reduced viewership could dent ABCs brand. The Disney-owned network has promoted itself as leading a TV industry push toward greater racial diversity (and on Wednesday, in a first for a major broadcaster, hired a black president of entertainment).

So much depends on Mr. Rock, who is not known for diplomacy.

Days after the 9/11 terror attacks, he tried out jokes in a Los Angeles comedy club about those trapped in the World Trade Center. His most recent film, two years ago, was Top Five, about a comic trying to get his mojo back. (Mr. Rock was writer, director and star.) It included a subplot in which its protagonist, Andre Allen, promotes his work in a film about a slave rebellion that killed 50,000 white people.

Scott Rudin, who was a producer of Top Five, suggested that Mr. Rock on Sunday will be served by his time spent working along cultural edges.

When you talk about who can walk a tightrope, he makes Philippe Petit look like an amateur, Mr. Rudin said in a phone interview, referring to a real-life high-wire artist who once walked between the World Trade Center towers.

Mr. Rocks aggressive comic style, seen as a bit much in 2005, may be less shocking in an era inured to the bawdy ramblings of an Amy Schumer, or the beery barbs of a Ricky Gervais, both of whom graced this years Golden Globes (which largely featured the same films that the Oscars will, and saw its audience drop 5 percent from 2015).

Of bigger concern, perhaps, are the size and currency of Mr. Rocks fan base. Ms. DeGeneres had the advantage of a daily talk show, and a Twitter following of 39 million. Neil Patrick Harris, last years host, appeared in the hit CBS series How I Met Your Mother through 2014, and had about 13.5 million followers.

Mr. Rock has 3.8 million followers, and has appeared only occasionally on television since 2009, when the CW network last aired new episodes of Everybody Hates Chris, a series for which he was narrator and executive producer.

In a 2013 interview with The Sioux City Journal, posted on his official website, Mr. Rock spoke of having passed up spots as a late-night television host to spend time with his two young daughters. At the time, he was among the producers of a talk show, Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell. (Mr. Bell described Mr. Rock as the foul-mouthed Yoda.) And he was awaiting the release of Grown Ups 2, in which he joined Adam Sandler in a comic ensemble.

Top Five took in just $25 million in North America after Paramount Pictures released it in December 2014. But critics liked it.

Chris Rock is the smartest person I know, Mr. Rudin said. If there is one person never to bet against, its him.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/22/business/media/oscars-pin-hopes-on-chris-rock-for-ratings.html