More Oscar changes?

By now, I’m sure you’ve all heard the news that, starting with the upcoming award show, the Best Picture nominees will be expanded from five to ten. But that’s not all the Academy has in store for us. While there were rumors that the Best Animated Film category would be shuttered (with the thinking that the best animated film would simply get nominated for Best Picture), that won’t be happening just yet though another category could still fall by the wayside. There is a distinct possibility that you could tune in on any given year and not see a “Best Original Song” winner announced.

This year the Academy has set new standards for being nominated for Best Original Song. All eligible songs are graded by a scoring committee and only those songs which are given a grade of 8.25 (out of ten) or higher are to be nominated. If five songs score higher than 8.25 (the maximum allowed), then there will be five nominees. If NO songs get a score higher than 8.25, then there will be NO nominees and the category will be scrapped for that year.

But what if only one song grades higher than 8.25? Does that mean that it automatically wins? Not quite. That would mean that the next highest rated song would get a lucky bump and get nominated to compete against the other song. This is all done in the name of cutting down the bloat in the show and getting more people interested in watching again (and, I assume, most people weren’t interested in those long musical numbers).