The Last Show with David Cooper
Charlie Keil: Youtube And The Oscars - December 19, 2025
20 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What historic shift is happening with the Oscars?
The show that makes you laugh, think, and occasionally uncomfortable. The Last Show with David Cooper. Are the Oscars making a deal with the devil? Well, that's what we're about to discuss because the Academy Awards are going to be moved to a YouTube only broadcast in just a few years.
And we're going to discuss that here with professor at the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto, Charlie Kyle. Charlie, welcome to the program.
Thanks for having me.
So this historic shift, I think people not in the film industry and not film buffs don't realize just how big this is. The Oscars moving from a major broadcast network, ABC in the US, to YouTube. So walk me through the headline.
Chapter 2: Why is the Oscars moving to a YouTube-only format?
What exactly is this announcement?
Okay, well, there's a couple of, I guess, frontline aspects of it. The first is that they're leaving the network with which they've had a relationship for decades. I think it's something like five decades. So this is a major change in an ongoing relationship. The other is that they're abandoning network television generally, as you said, for YouTube. And then the question would be why?
Why is YouTube preferable from the eyes of the Academy, from the safe home they've had for so many years?
That certainly is the question. Let's take a stab at answering it.
Chapter 3: What factors are driving the Oscars' decision to leave traditional broadcasting?
Is it a money thing? Is it an audience reach thing? Is it a rebranding in the world of streaming thing? Are all these things I just listed not mutually exclusive and it's all three?
I think that you have to look at a deal like this from the perspective of both parties, like what's in it for the Oscars and what's in it for YouTube. So for the Oscars, I think they've seen declining ratings over the last number of years. They had a high of something like 58 million, if you can imagine, viewers during the Titanic year.
And it's been a steady decline and become more rapidly evident as it has with other award show over the last post-COVID period. So they need to goose their numbers. They need to find a way to reach more people more consistently.
Chapter 4: How has the viewership of the Oscars changed over the years?
And I think many listeners would probably say, like, I don't necessarily watch the Oscars. I watch the clips. And where do you watch them? On YouTube. Guilty as charged. Yeah. So I think that there's a way in which the Oscars think this could deliver the show to more people in a more immediate fashion. And they're also talking about it being an important global step for them.
And it may be just more seamless because YouTube is an international carrier as opposed to with ABC. It has to be made a deal with each region because ABC doesn't exist in anywhere but really the US.
Chapter 5: What does YouTube gain from hosting the Oscars?
American Broadcasting Company. I think that's what the A stands for.
That's exactly what the A stands for. And then from YouTube's point of view, well, the future is for big number delivery, the future is live events. So you want to be getting yourself, you want to bag the ones that make a difference, that get a lot of press. And the Oscars is probably the most prominent non-sport live event there still is. So for YouTube, it's well worth it.
What does this say about big broadcasting stranglehold on like television? Does it show that it's losing its grip to streaming? I mean, I know the answer is yes when it comes to TV shows, but I never thought in a million years for live stuff like this, they would lose their grip.
Chapter 6: How is the shift to YouTube impacting traditional broadcasting?
What does this say about that?
Well, I'm inclined to say, unfortunately, for all of those broadcast TV aficionados, your tense is wrong. The grip has been loosened already. I just don't think that network TV has much claim to any importance anymore. I mean, it's yes, the Super Bowl is still on.
network but you know this is the slow and probably much more rapid march towards seeing the way in which almost nothing will be on network tv exclusively or primarily
I'm going to try to have a side conversation here and I'm probably going to sound like an idiot because you're like a professor in film and I'm just some idiot with a microphone. But this delineation between like the Emmys and the Oscars and television and movies, it was really driven by the way in which we consume the format. One, you went into a theater and sat down.
The other, you watch broadcast television in 30-minute slots with ads every 12 minutes or whatever it was.
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Chapter 7: What are the implications for the future of film and television?
There's a blur between the very formats. I wonder if in the future, like the Oscars and the Emmys might merge. If film doesn't have these points of formality and format, like being broadcast on TV in the awards ceremony and going into the theater and streaming is just taking over. What does this say about the future of the industry?
I mean, it's kind of the age old existential question. Can film survive as a separate format slash medium? And I think the answer for the time being is yes. I don't think the shift of this award show to YouTube is not the death knell for movies. I think it's a sign that the Academy recognizes it needs to reach more people in a more effective way.
But there's still this, however long it'll last, there's still this allure of the movies that is different than TV.
Chapter 8: Are there potential benefits and drawbacks of this move for the Oscars?
And the primary difference between TV and movies is that TV has a much more kind of let's say, porous format to it. You can have a show that lasts four episodes. It can be a miniseries. You can have something that goes on for 22. Movies are, by and large, single shot in a theater, as you say, but not necessarily just in a theater. But they're no more than two hours, three hours sometimes.
And that's it. So the format differences are still pretty entrenched. And there have been some instances recently of movies Oh, where does this fit? So I'll give you a good example.
Bridget Jones, the most recent Bridget Jones film, Universal, I would say in its not universal wisdom, decided to release the film theatrically in the international market where it made a lot of money and then just released it on Peacock for the purposes of, I think it was Peacock, sorry, but a streamer for the purposes of bringing viewership in for, I think it was Valentine's Day.
The film probably would have made a fair amount of money in the domestic box office. But the reason I mention all this is by virtue of doing that, it invalidated it for any Oscar nominations and then it had to be nominated for the Emmys because it only got released non-theatrically. Whereas it would have been, you know, relevant for, let's say, a BAFTA.
It sounds like you're not in the camp that theater is dead and that streaming has killed the theater. But there are people making those claims. And to those people, they're saying this deal is like making a deal with the devil. You're basically moving on to the very platform that's killing you. What do you say to someone who makes a remark like that?
Well... Yeah, but I don't think that really holds because back in the day, like back in the 1950s, all of Hollywood was up in arms about TV, right? TV was going to kill the movie.
And then the talkies, you know, when they added voice tracks to film, people were very upset about that.
Yeah, but that was at least still within the same format. I mean, when television came along, it was a competitor, a direct competitor with moviemaking. And everyone said, you know, we've got to stay away from TV. Well, that didn't last very long. They sold their libraries to the television industry.
Um, stations, not necessarily the networks, but then the networks too, uh, you know, stars who were past their prime started appearing on television shows instead of starting movies. Cause there weren't as many movies being made, et cetera, et cetera. The point being the main competition was television. And yet where did the Oscars appear on television?
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