The NFL plans to move to 18 regular season games starting with the 2012-2013 season. “I think it’s a win-win all around,” New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft said. (Except for the players whose bodies will be crushed even more by playing two additional games. But that’s a story for another blog.)
This means bad news for a vital cultural icon. The Oscars, obvi.
According to Variety, the annual “kudofest” will conflict with the Super Bowl and, therefore, need to move to another night. As you well know, the NFL championship is massive – watched by 106.5 million people last year, the biggest audience of all time – while the Oscar audience is, um, dwindling.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences sounds resigned to its fate. Bruce Davis, the group’s exec director told Variety that “We’re always happy to talk to the sports entities, but this is a going to be a tough one. It’s hard for them to take us into consideration.”
Davis knows that when the 800-pound gorilla that is the NFL wants to do something, all you can do is get out of the way.
The Oscars would likely move to a Monday night, which isn’t unprecedented. The telecast switched to Sunday evening in 1999 but had been on the first workday for decades. Clear your Monday nights in February 2013. Or don’t.