The Oscars Awards ceremony is a very old Hollywood tradition dating back 90 years. This year the Academy is doing their best to keep up with the times by updating their nomination announcements.
For the first time ever, the Oscar nominations will be live streamed via Oscar.com, Oscars.org, local broadcasters including ABC's "Good Morning America," a satellite feed and the academy's digital platforms. Past Oscar winners and nominees like Brie Larson, Jennifer Hudson, Ken Watanabe, Jason Reitman and Emanuel Lubezki will join Boone Isaacs to unveil this year's slate of nominees.
The move seems to be an attempt to attract a broader audience, most likely millennials who have grown up in the internet age. The Academy has done a good job evolving with the culture. They recently started allowing online voting and they have expanded their membership to be more inclusive to people who aren't white men.
Typically, the Oscars nominations announcements has been an early morning event, in order to make it into the day's news cycle. This is a somewhat antiquated process though, as they are missing out on a lot of potential revenue. There's no reason it shouldn't be a primetime special like the Grammys or the NFL draft.
Although this might seem like a positive shift, not everyone is happy about the decision. Dorothea Sargent, an awards consultant and publicist since 2003, wrote an open letter to the Academy on her Facebook page in which she voiced her displeasure.
Academy executives are no doubt happy about this change. This new process will save them from having to answer any media questions about the nominations. Something that was a headache for them last year amid the #OscarsSoWhite controversy.
The Oscar nominations will still be held at an unusually early time on Jan. 24, but this year it will start even earlier than usual, 5:18am.