The television broadcast of the Bafta film awards ceremony “must not compromise the event itself”, according to Bafta CEO Jane Millichip, speaking at the opening event of the BFI London Film Festival Industry Forum.
“It’s two things in one,” said Millichip, who held her first Bafta film awards as CEO in February this year. “There’s the event itself, and then there’s the television coverage. One thing I was very keen to distinguish from the outset – these are two related [but] different beasts.
“So the production of the TV programme needs to be entertainment. It needs to be a television spectacular. It must not compromise the event itself, where every award, every category is the same. It’s a level playing field on the night.”
Millichip was in conversation with Bill Kramer, CEO of the US’ Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Ampas), at a session hosted by BFI CEO Ben Roberts.
The Oscars, Ampas’ flagship event, saw a 12% increase in viewing figures in 2023, bucking the trend of falling ratings over recent years. “The landscape of linear TV looks different than it did even a few years ago – that’s going to continue to change,” said Kramer of the general decline in viewership. “We’re constantly thinking about ‘how do we redefine the success of the show?’, to not just be ‘how many people watched it the night of’.”
“You want to look at the live plus seven number [viewership including a week after original air date]; you want to look at who’s looking at your social channels. Some people want to take snippets from the show – that’s still important to us.”
Kramer noted that individual pieces of online content from this year’s Oscars exceeded the 20m US audience of the show itself. “That’s great because we’re bringing in a lot of younger, newer audiences,” said the CEO. “We just have to figure out how to monetise that, because that’s our content.”
There is “definitely interest in the public in awards ceremonies,” said Millichip, who noted an increase in ratings for the 2023 Bafta Film Awards to 2.6m, and 30m views on social channels. “It’s refining the output and the product for various audiences,” continued Millichip. “It’s the experience for people in the room, but you need to make sure that it is a rich entertainment proposition for TV as well.”
“The BBC continues to be a great partner; we continue to evolve the format of the TV to see what works and what doesn’t,” added Millichip. The Bafta Film Awards broadcast the final four awards live for the 2023 ceremony.
Radical disruption
A small number of UK crews held a rally at last night’s LFF opening ceremony to highlight the struggles of film crews during the US strike. Roberts began the session by noting that “we’re not going to spend any time talking about the strikes; one of them has ended [the WGA writers’ strike]; we’re hopeful that the actors’ strike will end soon.”
Without mentioning the strikes directly, Kramer did note that Ampas sits in two worlds – “the film world and the non-profit arts and culture world”.
“Both are going through moments of radical disruption,” said Kramer, who was director and president of the Academy Museum in Los Angeles prior to becoming CEO. “I did go in [to his new role] with my eyes open. I knew the teams; I knew what I thought needed to change. The non-profit arts sector is really struggling right now. [Ampas] is not thankfully, but it is giving us a lot to think about for the future.” Kramer said this was focused around 2028, when the Academy will hold the 100th Oscars ceremony.
Kramer also noted that Ampas’ future will be increasingly international, with “around 25%” of its 11,000 membership coming from outside the US. The increased presence of international films across all Oscars categories has brought attention on the validity of the international film award. On the question of whether that award could become redundant in the future, Kramer said “not yet”, while reaffirming that the Academy is “constantly looking at” all of its rules and awards.
Answering a similar point about the outstanding British film award at the Baftas, Millichip said such categories “are really good at bringing up to the surface” films that might otherwise struggle for awards attention. “Not everyone needs to win or has to win; we know that practitioners and creatives, if they’ve been nominated or long-listed, they use that in their CV.”
Prince William
Responding to a question about how the CEOs spend the night of the ceremony itself, Millichip told an amusing anecdote about introducing Prince William, president of Bafta, to the winners following the 2023 Film Awards.
“I memorised the winners, but by the time we got back to stage, they’d all been chatting and jumbled up,” recalled Millichip. “I stopped in my tracks and went, ‘Oh my God!’. The Prince said to me ‘Are you OK, Jane?’, and I said, ‘I’m meant to be introducing you to everybody and I can’t remember who everybody is any more!’”
“He said, ‘Don’t worry – stick with me, I’ve done this before.’ And he actually introduced me to everybody. He said, ‘Hello – have you met Jane, the new CEO of Bafta?’ So I am in his debt.”
Discussing their routes into the screen industries as youngsters, Kramer said that he used to collect the trade magazines from the one newsstand that sold them where he grew up in Baltimore; to which Roberts revealed that when he was 17, he used to order Screen International into WHSmith [a UK newsagent chain] to read box office and industry coverage.
Kramer was named Academy CEO in June 2022, taking over from Dawn Hudson, while Millichip started in her role as Bafta CEO at the end of last year.
The BFI Industry Forum continues today (October 5) with a talk with Jennifer Lee, chief creative officer at Walt Disney Animation Studios and director of Frozen and Frozen 2.
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