The Hollywood Film Academy has gone global. Can your income do the same?

Our own Nancy Tartaglione was there this week as Bill Cramer, the new CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, had the whole world to watch.

“I think our future lies as much in international cinema as it is in American cinema,” said Kramer, Tartaglione said, during a discussion on “Film Values ​​in Global Society” at the Venice Film Festival.

25% of the Academy’s members now come from outside the United States. Half of the last group of new members is considered international (although this can be defined in the somewhat unlimited realm of cinema).

The Hollywood Film Academy has officially gone global. If only the audience for the Oscars and the ensuing TV revenue could catch up.

The Academy has generally concealed the exact split between domestic and overseas earnings for its award broadcasts, which historically accounted for nearly all of the group’s non-investment earnings. This is not a statistic that appears in an annual financial report.

In 2003, when business journalist James Peltz and I tried to compile a comprehensive study on the economics of the Oscars. Los Angeles TimesWe have not been able to provide a figure for the Academy’s foreign television revenue. Driven by the hype that claimed “a billion viewers worldwide,” we vaguely thought that foreign receipts should roughly match domestic receipts, equaling the 50-50 split that was common for large-scale movie success at that time. moment.

But it wasn’t close.

Only many years later, with a series of museum ties, did the Academy reveal the exact balance between the national and the international. In 2019, the last year a hiatus was available, the Academy’s national television deal with ABC paid for $ 107,069,000, while its secondary deal with Disney’s Buena Vista International unit paid only $. 15.037.500.

In other words, international revenues accounted for over 12% of the total.

That balance is said to have not changed dramatically in the past three years, except perhaps in 2021, when ABC reduced its national payment with a one-time allowance caused by the disruptions of the pandemic.

In fact, according to a new book by former academy head Bruce Davis Academy and awardInternational admissions have never been a major factor, mainly because international viewers mostly watch a 90-minute version of the Oscars show at the end of the day that is edited in flight.

“Overseas distribution rights,” writes Davis, “were so little considered during the first thirty years of television awards that they were transferred without payment to the US broadcasting network.” Only since the mid-1980s have they done something and until recently that figure represented about 10 percent of total television revenue.

Even in recent times, foreign income appears not to have been a priority. I know of a pre-academic candidate for Kramer who suggested to executives that the increase in foreign membership, following changes to the Oscar voting system, must somehow be accompanied by a corresponding increase in foreign audiences and revenues. The candidate was not employed.

Of course, there is a window of opportunity. The Academy’s current contract with Buena Vista International expires in 2024, four years before the national rights agreement with ABC. A renewed approach to foreign television is possible.

But another possible future is emerging, which may not lead to more representation at the Oscars, neither here nor abroad, but it could balance the Academy’s financial position.

One factor is the film museum, which generates tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue from ticket and merchandise sales, some of that money from overseas. Associated with the museum is an aggressive approach to the brand’s global alliances and sponsors to match the Rolex alliance, which generates nearly $ 15 million in annual revenue. Discussions about such sponsorships, including a possible deal with MasterCard International, have a lot to do with the Academy’s ongoing (and likely repeated) trip to Venice and other festivals.

If “globalism” means rich corporate deals in the glamor circuit, the Academy could be financially stronger in a few years, perhaps even strong enough to survive any broadcast tax cuts.

But the Oscars, already a shaky local show, previous films and directors increasingly coming from overseas, could shrink, shrink and become culturally less relevant.