Why was there such a lack of interest in this year's Academy Awards, leading the kudoscast to deliver its smallest audience on record? It's the movies, stupid, says producer Gil Cates, pointing out that in recent years, ratings for the show have matched the popularity of the nominated films. "I [produced] the show the year Titanic made a billion dollars and [this year's best-picture nominees] together probably didn't reach $300 million," he says. "Only Juno did really well. That's the major reason." Cates, who was a main negotiator for the successful Directors Guild contract, also blames the writers' strike. "Less people were watching the networks and less people were watching the promos," he says, pointing out that the Grammys audience similarly shrank more than 20 percent. There is some good ratings news to be had, however: Cates says that those who bothered to tune in for the Feb. 24 gala stayed tuned in for the entire show. — Ileane Rudolph
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Four-time Oscar host Whoopi Goldberg teared up on Monday's The View after the ladies brought up her exclusion from what looked like a tribute montage to past hosts on Sunday's telecast. In turn, Gil Cates, who produced the show, called Whoopi to apologize. "That piece of film was made to honor 80 years of Oscar's most memorable moments," he told TV Guide. Because of the show's crash production schedule after the end of the WGA strike, Cates saw the montage only days before it aired. "I never realized that Whoopi wasn't in it — and she hosted two times for me! And Steve Martin's not in it, I now realize. I feel badly for him, too. It was just totally an oversight." Not that he's calling Martin with his mea culpa. "No, Steve's not that kind of guy." Cates is embarrassed "that anyone would think there was any reason that Whoopi wasn't included, except by accident. We did use a very major piece of her in the piece on [winning] supporting actors. She thanked me for calling, and tol...
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This season's inaugural telecast of NBC's Sunday Night Football — in which Dallas bested the New York Giants 45-35 — averaged a 13.6 in household ratings, down 10 percent from last year's series opener but more than doubling the audience of any network rival.... Joan Rivers is at it again, serving up fact- and insight-challenged commentary on Sunday's red-carpet Emmy arrivals via a blog at VH1EyeCandy.com.... Speaking of kudos-casts, Gil Cates will for a 14th time helm the Oscars, this time marking the show's 80th anniversary and airing Feb. 24 on ABC.
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Billy Crystal tells the Los Angeles Times that as recently as just before Christmas, Academy Awards producer Gil Cates was lobbying him to again host the March 5 kudos-cast. Crystal, though, will have just completed the L.A. run of his one-man stage show, 700 Sundays, and as such, "I didn't want to go from that into a meeting where I'm saying, 'Give me Brokeback Mountain jokes,'" he says. "It seemed so not what I wanted to do." The Daily Show's Jon Stewart will emcee the evening instead. Me, I'm just waiting for Debbie Allen's Brokeback interpretive dance.
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