The 96th Oscars have been given a new start date. In the USA, the event at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles starts at 7 pm eastern time, an hour earlier than before.
This means that in Germany the show starts at midnight, instead of at 1 a.m. as before.
The reason for the postponement is that the Academy expects the earlier date to attract a larger audience, especially in the USA, after ratings for the broadcast of the Academy Awards recently fell significantly. For some viewers, the anxiety over the Oscar for the best film of the year extended to 11 p.m. after more than three hours in the evening
Falling ratings for the Oscars
Last year, from West Coast to East Coast, just over 20 million Americans attended the Oscars. That meant an increase of almost eight percent compared to the previous year, but less than ten years ago the Academy Awards still had an audience of 40 million in the USA.
The transmission time in other countries, including Germany, plays a minor role in the broadcast time of the Oscars.