A Short Month of Oscar Overload

摘要

On Feb. 11, Paramount's Entertainment Tonight kicked off its Academy Awards—from O'Hare Airport. Correspondent Kevin Frazier flew with boxloads of Oscar statues from the Chicago factory that makes them to Tinseltown, where they will be awarded at the Kodak Theatre on Feb. 27. That was just one of hundreds of stories that will run virtually wall to wall this month on syndicated entertainment shows, cable networks and just about everywhere else on TV. For one month, the TV indus-try goes to extremes to cover Oscar, just as Hollywood tudios rally to get votes for their nominees. "The Oscars is a cultural phenomenon," says Beth Harris, director of marketing for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. "It's an American event, and now it's a worldwide event. I work with 134 different media outlets all over the world." It is a publicity mill, for sure. Every syndicated magazine show and a healthy handful of cable networks cover Hollywood's big night relentlessly in the weeks between the nominations and the awards, culminating in a post-Oscar evening that's always among the highest-rated TV events of the year.