“Nobody Watches the Oscars!” The Myth of Wishful Thinking

The silly ceremony still shapes culture in powerful ways

If you can’t stand the silly and self important spectacle of the Academy Awards, I hear you. I’m with you. I’m on your side. But please don’t take the next step and say nobody watches the Oscars.

You often hear that refrain this time of year, but, alas, it’s a myth.

That doesn’t mean it’s all wrong. Like so many myths, it does include some truth.

Viewership bounces up and down a bit from year to year, but the big-picture story is one of decline. In 2020, 46 million tuned into the Oscars. In 2025, Conan and company managed only about 20 million.

That kind of trend line is common for many decades-old shows that are still around today. With the explosion in entertainment options, it’s tough for any one option to even tread water. So maybe, like network news, the Oscars ceremony is shrinking in importance.

Or maybe reality is more complicated.

Many people still do watch the Oscars.

The 20 million who tuned in a couple weeks ago topped the combined ratings of the next three most watched primetime shows. And the broadcast figures understate the ceremony’s influence. Many additional people watch clips from the glittery affair on YouTube, X, and other platforms. Still others hear about it on television, podcasts, social media, radio, and so on. Viewership is one thing. Cultural impact is another.

And when we focus so much on how many people watch, we overlook another important question related to impact—who’s watching?

Harvard in Hollywood

Think of the Oscars as the Harvard of awards shows.

Just as Harvard influences campuses far beyond Cambridge, what happens in Hollywood influences the types of projects filmmakers around the world pursue. It doesn’t even matter if they have a real shot of participating in the industry’s biggest night. The dream alone is enough to spark action.

And Oscar hunters want all the usual goodies—fame, fortune and so on. But some goodies are more important than others. Sure they want to be recognized at the airport, but what Oscar hunters probably want most of all is the respect of their peers. In Hollywood, Oscar gold remains the ultimate status symbol. Win an Oscar and that achievement will appear in the first line of your bio forever.

In fact, most people in Hollywood would probably prefer a little gold man over a big bag of gold.

In his harrowing memoir Troubled (hey, that would make a great movie!), Rob Henderson notes that once our physical needs are met, we humans get more fixated on social status.

“In fact,” he writes, “research has revealed that sociometric status (respect and admiration from peers) is more important for well-being than socioeconomic status.” Henderson adds that high-status people actually hunger for status more than anyone else does. Watch just about any petty celebrity spat, and you’ll see that truth shine through.

But let’s not forget one thing — “and” is better than “or.”

If you can get both, why bother choosing between status or wealth?

Leonardo DiCaprio once gave Timothée Chalamet some career advice: “No superhero movies, no hard drugs.” The strategy worked for the Oscar-winning DiCaprio and it might help get the Oscar-nominated Chalamet over the hump.

Think about it.

The actor who stars in some paint-by-numbers superhero blockbuster will get filthy rich, but he might not get admitted to the Cool Kids’ Club. His big payday may actually make it harder for him to get past the velvet rope. He might find himself on the outside looking in at all the “real” actors.

But what if, instead of squeezing into superhero tights, he stars in some “edgy” film that critics call “brave”? And what if he lands an Oscar? In that case, he’d get admitted to the Cool Kids’ Club and he'd be showered with lucrative new opportunities. So Oscar gold often makes it easier to score real gold.

In other words, one little statue allows actors and other filmmakers to enjoy higher status and more money.

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Observing Them in Their Natural Habitat

As silly as the show may be, it'd be hard to understate how badly so many filmmakers want to be praised on that stage. This year Anora scored five Oscars (including Best Picture), making filmmaker Sean Baker the biggest winner of the night. But it’d be naive to regard it as merely a surprise performance by an indie darling who suddenly realized he was the center of attention.

Yes, Baker made the very indie (and very good) Florida Project starring Willem (not William!) Dafoe and yes, Baker once shot a whole feature on an iPhone. He racked up loads of indie points for all of that.

But Baker also benefited from some not-very-indie Oscar jostling.

Turns out Anora’s distributor shelled out $18 million for the film’s awards campaign, that’s three times as much as the film’s production budget. No doubt Team Anora figured it had to spend big because it was locked in a battle with other deep-pocketed Oscar hunters, including Netflix, who could spend much more.

And remember, the Oscars act as a kind of “studio mandate” for a massive army of producers. If the Academy rewards movies with a particular storyline, theme or worldview, producers will develop more projects like those. After Anora’s strong showing, you can bet Hollywood’s money people are fielding more pitches involving prostitutes, er, I mean sex workers.

The dance of the status seekers goes on whether Oscar viewership rises or falls from year to year. Yes, most Americans don’t care about the dance.

But even if most Americans don’t watch the Oscars, the Oscars will continue to play a big role in what most Americans watch.

Ted Balaker is a filmmaker, and former network newser and think tanker. His written work has appeared in many publications including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Reason, and The Washington Post.

His recent film work includes Little Pink House starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn, Can We Take a Joke? featuring Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette, and the new feature documentary based on the bestselling book, The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. Stream the very first “Substack Presents” feature documentary here on Substack or on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and Google Play.

Ted and his wife and producing partner Courtney Moorehead Balaker are now making a narrative feature film based on Rob Henderson’s bestselling book Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class.