Her performance Sunday night brought mixed reviews, but at least one critic who watches television for a living found Ellen DeGeneres to be the consummate Oscars host.
Robert J. Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, rated DeGeneres as a success in the role because of her ability to steer the Academy Awards telecast without straying too far from the conventions of Hollywood’s big night. “You can’t be too distinct, you have to defer to the show,” Thompson said. “You can’t have a wise guy come in and not play by the rules.
“That was David Letterman’s problem,” Thompson continued. “The host is the only lubrication that can make those stodgy old wheels turn.”
Other past Oscars hosts that got a thumbs-up from Thompson: Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg.
The 79th Annual Academy Awards on Sunday drew the eighth-smallest TV audience since Nielsen Media Research began counting individual viewers in 1974. ABC charged an estimated $1.7 million for a 30-second spot on the Sunday telecast, up from $1.6 million last year. The biggest audience for the Oscars came in 1998, when “Titanic” won best picture and a 30-second commercial cost $950,000. The program’s weakest pull was its audience of 33 million in 2003, the year “Chicago” won for best picture and advertisers spent $1.3 million for 30 seconds of time.