The long-running Academy Awards is under new management, and film fans worry it is still heading in the wrong direction. Last year the Academy made a sincere but botched attempt to speed up its long awards ceremony. But last week, the Academy’s new CEO Bill Kramer said in an interview with the organization’s digital magazine a.Frame that he wants to see “all artistic and scientific disciplines honored on the show.”

What he’s referring to is the fact that at the 94th Academy Awards in March 2022, eight of the awards were pre-recorded. This was done in an attempt to shorten parts of the ceremony and speed things up. However, it caused considerable backlash from filmmakers who felt that it was disrespectful to the winners of the eight awards: Best Animated Short Film, Best Documentary Short Subject, Best Film Editing, Best Live Action Short Film, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, and Best Sound. Kramer’s announcement means that the next Oscars will likely give up on making the ceremony shorter.

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Each year, the Academy tries something new to fix the awards show, and each time they announce that they will go back to the format that’s clearly not working. The viewer count drops lower each year they fail to fix the problem.

The Academy Awards’ Declining Ratings

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The speed with which the Oscars’ ratings have plummeted is far more dramatic than anything the ceremony has to offer. For many decades the Oscars had consistently captured around 35-45 million viewers, and only eight years ago was able to bring in 43.7 million in a single night. However, starting around 2017, its ratings began to decline sharply, culminating in a shocking record low of 10.4 million viewers in 2021. To be fair, though, it’s important to note that 2021 was an incredibly slow year for movies. The 2020 COVID outbreak virtually stopped film production, and the lack of recognizable and popular films nominated at the 2021 Oscars certainly played a factor in the low ratings.

This year the ceremony did recover a bit with an audience of 16.6 million, but this was likely bolstered by the viral incident involving Will Smith and Chris Rock a little over two-thirds of the way through the show. Compare this to the 2018 FIFA World Cup Final, which was watched by 1.1 billion (with a b) people around the world. All in all, the Oscars is not what it used to be, and something has to be done to fix the ceremony.

Speed Up Categories and Cut Some Speeches

The length of the ceremony is one of its biggest problems. If your live awards show is roughly the same length as Lawrence of Arabia — which clocks in at 3 hours and 47 minutes, including the intermission — it is fair to say it will be difficult to keep attention. Even for die-hard fans who live and breathe movies, getting through the entire ceremony is a serious challenge. And for people who are only mildly interested in the ceremony or the brand of middle-brow Oscar-bait films that the awards honor, the nearly four-hour runtime is intolerable.

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Although we’ve gotten used to today’s Oscars, it really doesn’t have to be this way. The 1st Academy Awards, for example, was held on May 16, 1929, at a private dinner that cost $5 to attend (around $79 today, adjusted for inflation) and lasted only 15 minutes. Admittedly, this first iteration was not televised and honored only twelve awards, compared to the twenty-three of this year. Still, even considering these factors, it would be possible to conduct the entire Oscars ceremony in an hour. Of course, this would be a more stripped-down affair, but one could probably stage a more elaborate evening in a modest two hours and a bloated one in three.

So how can they shorten the ceremony? One serious possibility is to do what the show attempted earlier this year but to do it differently. The 2022 Oscars tried to speed up the proceedings by presenting many awards before the ceremony started and editing the recorded footage into the live show. However, the execution left much to be desired. Because the producers still aired the listing of the nominees, the reading of the winners, and the speeches for all these awards, it saved only a few minutes. Furthermore, this caused considerable confusion when the winners were predictably leaked online hours before they aired on the show.

Instead, perhaps they should read the winners live on the show to really and truly shorten the process. Eliminate the buildup, the scripted jokes from the celebrity presenters, and the dead air. Moreover, it’s a difficult decision to make, but the Academy should consider cutting the speeches of some awards. It may be better to have the winners give their speeches in the winners’ lounge behind the stage and upload them to social media in real-time. The Game Awards, the video game equivalent of the Oscars, does speed-readings of minor category winners, blasting through three in ten-second bursts throughout the show. The Oscars should seriously consider something similar.

Trim Down or Eliminate Host Skits and Musical Numbers

While deciding to cut speeches and lightning-round certain awards is a difficult and sad one to make, there’s one decision that’s not: eliminating the host comedy skits. According to a letter sent by the Academy to its members, the intended purpose of speeding up the minor categories was to create more time for “comedy, musical numbers, film clip packages and movie tributes.”

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Apparently, ABC, the network that broadcasts the ceremony, insisted on the move. However, the long host skits and multiple musical numbers should be almost completely cut from the show aside from two or three in the beginning, middle, or end.

Debut Exclusive Announcements, Trailers, and More

One of the biggest areas the Oscars lacks is that they don’t present anything new. But consider The Game Awards — the video game equivalent of the Oscars. The Game Awards is chock-full of new, original content that cannot be seen anywhere else. At the ceremony, they reveal new teasers and trailers for upcoming games, present messages and short interviews with beloved industry icons, announce brand-new games for the very first time, and even give away digital codes for free games to those watching.

How much more lively, exciting, and interesting would the show be? How many more people would tune in? There is no reason they can’t do this, as movies do things like this all the time. There are teasers that debut during the Super Bowl, trailers that play within games of Fortnite, and studios posting reveals straight to YouTube or Twitter. What studio wouldn’t be chomping at the bit for a guaranteed audience of 16 million for their trailer?

These are just a few things the Oscars could do to improve the ceremony, in addition to adding a few categories for streaming or television. But shortening the ceremony and making it enjoyable to watch is a good first step to recovering lost viewers.