Today we’ll learn the 2024 Oscar nominees (🤞), and as audio-visual awards season gets into full swing, the print side of the industry is getting in on the act as EMPIRE magazine teams up with Ghostbusters to launch GLOW IN THE DARK covers! Try getting your digital screens to glow… in the… Anyway, the winners are…
Awards chatter
By the time you get to reading this, it’s likely that Barbenheimer will already be confirmed amongst the frontrunners for 2024 Academy Award success. But perhaps more interesting still, is what the public staging of these ceremonies can tell us about shifting media patterns at macro level.
It’s no secret that awards ceremony ratings dipped during the pandemic (and of course, who can blame audiences for not wanting to sit through an evening of Kevin Bacon on the Zoom, after a day spent… on the Zoom). But like a great many things pandemic-related, this shift was merely accelerated by the lockdown, as opposed to emanating exclusively from it, and so a lot of the questioning from the industry now becomes about the validity of this sort of 3hr+ format more generally.
Writing for the pages of CNN Entertainment, Brian Lowry notes: ‘These days, younger audiences don’t have the same award-viewing habits and seem content to catch clips of highlights as opposed to sitting through a three-hour-plus presentation.’
This trend is underlined by newly-published data from comScore, which tells us that even socially, the Golden Globes, Emmys, Grammys, and Oscars now tend to drive their highest levels of engagement a day AFTER the actual ceremonies themselves.
So, lamentable loss of bygone staples from the ‘fixed event television’ era? Or inevitable readjustment as audiences switch off from a ‘behind the scenes’ platypus format that predates the social scene? YOU decide!
Bauer Power
One area of media that has undoubtedly taken a battering in recent years is print, but every so often, a physical product comes along that captivates. One such example is the latest issue of Bauer’s EMPIRE magazine, which has this month launched its first ever glow-in-the-dark covers to celebrate the release of Sony’s Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. In an all new and exclusive shoot, lead cast members from the original films and 2021 sequel Afterlife grace two different covers, both available on the newsstand.
Bauer also last week announced another impressive physical world tie-up, with RAIL magazine’s 1000th issue honoured as London North Eastern Railway (LNER) renumbered one of its trains from 91105 to 91000.
Oh, and the media company also just appointed Nicola Bates as Group Managing Director – Commercial, for UK Publishing, who will lead a team of 120+ commercial specialists.
Artificial Intelligence: Dawn of a New World Order
Sticking with the traditional publishing sector (and not in fact the title of a new PS5 game, as it may initially sound to some), today is also an important date in the media calendar because both the German Chancellor and EC President head to Axel Springer HQ to discuss the implications of AI at the WELT Economic Summit.
Now in its 15th incarnation, the summit will consider a number of topics, but take AI as its central theme via a programme labelled: ‘Artificial Intelligence: Dawn of a New World Order’. This is interesting not only because of the magnitude of speakers on offer, but also because Axel Springer has itself been one of the most pioneering publishers when it comes to the embracement of AI.
Things we like
We get sent a lot of Disney press releases, which is not surprising given the brand’s enduring status as one of the world’s leading entertainment companies. But one that did jump off the page was the announcement that next month, Walt Disney Animation Studios’ in collaboration with Pan-African entertainment company Kugali, will launch an all-new six-part series call Iwájú, which will stream on Disney+ from the end of February.
It’s an original animated series set in a futuristic Lagos, Nigeria and tells the coming-of-age story of Tola, a young girl from the wealthy island, and her best friend, Kole, a self-taught tech expert. We’ve looked many times in recent years at the potential for more African content to make it BIG on global platforms, and Iwájú represents a good example of that trend beginning to come to fruition.
And finally…
It’s clear that the relationship between politics and media continues to become more turbulent… one need look no further than the latest flare-up between the UK government and the BBC to see the living incarnation of that.
But as is often the case, looking past the headlines and more deeply into the human stories behind them, can provide greater understanding as to what’s actually going on in this shared realm today. One such example comes in the form of an excellent interview between The Guardian’s Charlotte Edwardes and Eng-er-land’s own Gary Lineker, in which the former England Captain talks about his navigation through the at times all too symbiotic worlds of politics and media today: ‘The levels of attack are extraordinary’: Gary Lineker on punditry, podcasts – and why he won’t stop speaking his mind is a great long(ish) read!