The Academy Awards are never short on drama and this year seems to be no different. The Oscars are changing it up for 2022 by cutting categories for the show and adding a popular film category chosen by the public. It’s almost as if people keep tuning out because Hollywood is out of touch with the rest of the country and does this show just to pat themselves on the back.  But I digress.

With the new changes some categories were cut from this year’s awards show, to be given out earlier as to shorten broadcast time. Instead they would be pre-recorded and put into the live show.

The cut categories are: documentary short, film editing, makeup/hairstyling, original score, production design, animated short, live-action short, and sound.

Now what’s interesting is that in a story about the situation that The Hollywood Reporter posted, one Academy Governor stated that Disney/ABC mandated the cuts and threatened to cancel the event if cuts weren’t made.

“Another governor of a branch that has lost a category from the live telecast, who wishes to remain nameless, says he was jarred when, over the summer, he received a call from Hudson [CEO Dawn Hudson] explaining why significant changes to the format of the Oscars were necessary. This governor says that he was told that ABC had warned the Academy that it would cancel the Oscars telecast, via a clause in the Academy and ABC’s deal for the Oscars’ broadcasting rights, if 12 categories were not removed from the show. “We were told we’d have to sacrifice something or we were going to lose the whole show,” this governor recalls.”

In the end it was only eight categories that got axed including the animated short category that Disney didn’t have any nominees in this year. However they did have nominees in other categories that were cut.

At the end of the day ABC knows that the viewership keeps dropping. The awards are nominated by Hollywood and voted on by Hollywood. The general public simply doesn’t care anymore. What the masses like is usually far removed from what Hollywood decides and the acceptance speeches have gotten more and more “preachy.”

Disney is right that people don’t care. A popular vote for the public could help, but I don’t think there is much that Hollywood can do to save these award shows. The real word, life, inflation and war are more important to the psyche of the audience that who wore what designer and who pretended to be someone else best.

What do you think? Comment and let us know!