The Academy Awards is one of the most anticipated award shows of the year, as it celebrates the best films, its actors, and the many others who work to put them together. However, this year, viewership for this year’s Oscars fell dramatically.

For the last several years, the number of viewers of the Oscars has been between twenty to thirty million, but this year, that number was below ten million. Additionally, less money was spent on advertising for this year’s Oscars, which contributed to fewer people tuning in to the show.

Unfortunately, for the people who watched the show, many people would change the channel partway through due to changes in the show’s format.

For instance, the clips of each nominee that are typical and expected to play so that the audience can understand why they were nominated were largely removed, leaving more time for all of the winners to have unnecessarily long acceptance speeches that are exciting for the winners but boring for the viewers.

For viewers who made it to the end of the show, a bizarre turn of events took place. Instead of the best actor being announced before the final award, best picture, they were swapped. However, before the final award for best actor was announced, a tribute to Chadwick Boseman, one of the nominees who passed last year due to colon cancer, was played. After the strange swapping of awards and the tribute to the late actor, it was obvious the Academy expected Chadwick Boseman to win the award. Unfortunately for them, Anthony Hopkins, who had already left the award ceremony, would win the award instead.

Hopefully in the following years, the mistakes from this year’s show can be corrected, and the viewership will rise to what it used to be.