At its best, the Academy Awards function as a time capsule for the year’s national (and increasingly international) consciousness. Long before hashtags, nominated films reflected what was “trending” in our minds. Platoon (1986) and The injury closet (2009) revealed the harsh realities and cultural considerations of very different wars. Wall Street (1987) and Big Short (2015) explored two sides of the same greed-driven coin. When art and technology intersected alongside this cultural mirror, the Oscars it became a microcosm for larger behavioral shifts. The ceremony was extended not only to externalize our collective care, but to make a direct comment on where our attention is going.
Irony is not without a sense of humor. The Oscars, America’s most-watched awards show that celebrates storytelling on the big screen, is heading to YouTube in 2029, a digital destination most often consumed on ever-shrinking screens for minutes at a time. Once a pillar of the monoculture that united Hollywood and its consumer constituents, the prices show loss of gravitational pull into endless new niches.
For the first time, the Oscars are following the audience rather than leading it.
Limited attention in the age of Entertainment Everywhere
You don’t need to be reminded that the Academy Awards have bloodied viewers enough to qualify for its own nomination for Makeup. The ceremony has failed to hit 20 million viewers from 2021 to 2025 after decades of lightly clearing that mark. Its fall speaks for how viewers consume media these days. We now exist in the era of Entertainment Everywhere.
The American public spent 16.7 trillion streaming minutes in 2025, according to Nielsen. Instagram developed an app for the TV screen. Podcasts are now on Netflix. You can watch a creator playing video games on YouTube or Twitch while playing the same game on your phone. You can build entire worlds in Minecraft and Roblox! Awards shows aren’t just competing with their same-night TV timeslots. They compete with entire digital ecosystems.
The 1980s and 1990s often saw as many as 50 million Americans watching the crowning cultural sensation of the Academy Awards, experienced together en masse. Today, our cultural inputs are determined by personalized recommendation algorithms.
Mainstream box office hits struggle to consistently earn nominations, while smaller prestige films aren’t always sexy or contagious with audiences. Four of this year’s 10 Best Picture nominees (Bugonia, Hamnet, Sentimental Value, The Secret Agent) failed to gross more than $50 million worldwide. Two nominees (Frankenstein, Train Dreams) are Netflix exclusive titles which historically see sharp declines in engagement. That’s pretty much done alongside the course as we progress into the 21st century of film.
I love arthouse films as much as the next cinema. But price recognition no longer drives the masses. So if your best photo is filled with more maestro AND Fabelmans how much Top Gun: Mavericks AND Barbies, you won’t attract as much attention.
Social media has shattered the mystique of Hollywood
The public previously only interacted with celebrities through traditional filtered channels: magazine covers, E! Channel and internet by phone (cut to Gen Z’s collective shudder). But celebrities today have gone direct to the consumer. Social media builds seamless bridges to and from fan bases.
This has demystified celebrity in ways that likely contributed to the decline of the Oscars’ cultural relevance. As experienced on live linear TV, the awards show once offered rare access to Hollywood’s biggest stars, decked out at their best (and worst). But the novelty of celebrities has worn off now that fans have 24/7 access to their favorite figures. Why watch a watch on the red carpet to catch a glimpse of Zendaya’s outfit as she promotes her fashion to her more than 176 million Instagram followers? Hollywood’s tall walled gate has been pierced from the inside.
Social media-driven young people, an audience of nearly 6.7 million American adults, are more than twice as likely as the average person to be influenced by creators online and are over-indexed on multiple streaming platforms, according to Greenlight Analytics, where I work as Director of Insights & Content Strategy. But pop culture conversation increasingly takes place on Twitter/X, TikTok, YouTube, Letterboxd, and memes in all of the above. The overall live audience is smaller and the virality is less centralized. The origin of influence has moved from the big screen to the phone screen.
The purpose of the YouTube migration is clear. The Academy wants to reach and recruit younger viewers, be more accessible to international audiences and match modern viewing behaviour. But there are logistical challenges.
YouTube has been reported nine-figure commitment beat Disney’s eight-figure bid for the Oscars rights, but the platform lacks experience producing live events at home. The stream tries to match the broad reach of the stream. YouTube’s exclusive NFL game in September drew 17.3 million viewers globally, less than 18.7 million Average NFL viewers per game last season on linear TV and streaming platforms. Switching distribution platforms is no guarantee of immediate audience growth.
The popularity of the Oscars has fallen in step with the sweeping changes that have reshaped audiences and the industry. The streaming and fragmentation of social media, the loss of monoculture, the greater visibility and accessibility of celebrities, and changing tastes have all changed the game. The cultural changes depicted in the Best Picture contenders are now overshadowed by what the declining ceremony says about culture at large.
Escaping traditional distributions for a more modern alternative makes long-term sense. But it’s also an omission. The Oscars no longer set the cultural agenda. The best the nearly 100-year-old Academy Awards can hope for today is to try and move on.
