Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Film Ads finally allowed during Oscar Ceremony


From Variety:

Movie ads have always been banned from the movies’ biggest night on TV.

Not any more.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences board of governors voted Tuesday night to ease its longstanding ban on movie advertisements running in the Oscar telecast.

The board voted to allow a limited number of spots for movies that will not open until the last week of April at the earliest — meaning that none of the nommed pics can be tubthumped during the telecast, Acad prexy Sid Ganis told Daily Variety. Ads for sequels or prequels to pics in contention in the picture, docu and animation categories will not be allowed.

Acad had banned movie advertising ever since the Oscars were first televised in 1953 in an effort to avoid any suggestion that studio coin influenced the outcome of the awards.

The ads must never have appeared before their appearance during the Oscar telecast, and only one per distributor will be allowed.

It seems obvious that there should be commercials for the summer tentpoles during the Oscar ceremony, but out of fear of seeming to have the votes tarnished, this has never been allowed before now. Seems like having an ad for Transformers 2 or G.I. Joe has little worry of affecting it's Oscar chances for next year!

The Oscars have rivaled the Super Bowl in having first run creative ads, and to me this just makes lots of sense. You've got a worldwide audience of millions of people who love and are interested in movies. Yeah, we'd like to be the first to see some movie commercials for upcoming pics!

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