Oscars Likely to Be Host-less Again in 2020
ABC knows a good thing when it sees it, and that's why the network is likely to stick with a host-less Oscars next year.
This year's Academy Awards ceremony went without a host for the first time since 1989. Reviews of the Feb. 24 telecast were positive and so were the ratings: an average of 29.6 million viewers, up 11 percent from the previous year.
“We’re extremely proud of how the show turned out creatively and how well it performed this year, so I think you will see us not messing with that formula to the best of our abilities,” ABC chief Karey Burke told reporters on Tuesday.
This year's Oscars went host-less after Kevin Hart accepted the position of emcee, then backed out following a controversy over old homophobic jokes.
The Academy and producers Donna Gigliotti and Glenn Weiss decided not to hire a new host. Instead, the show opened with a brief bit by presenters Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Maya Rudolph.
Burke acknowledged that things could change and next year's telecast producers might want to go back to having a host.
"What I’m learning about the Oscars process is a lot of it — it really does shape throughout the course of the year based on what movies the audience is finding, and that starts to lead the creative and the thinking about what kind of telecast the Academy wants to put on in partnership with us," Burke said.
"So they really are conversations that continue to evolve over the course of the year, but right now we’re unbelievably happy with the results from this year and so I think you’ll see, hopefully, we’ll have that same kind of success and that same kind of push with the show this year.”