The Academy Awards, and Online

This past Monday, the most anticipated, or at least my most anticipated event of the year happened. The Academy Awards, or even more commonly known as, The Oscars. I will save the rambling of talking about what exactly The Oscars is, but in short, it is a celebration, and ceremony to reward the years best film practitioners.

The Academy Awards have come to their 90th year, and overtime has had the ability to become more inclusive with it’s audience from around the world, who are watching live from their homes.

With the growth of social media, the Oscars team take advantage of sites such as Twitter to interact with viewers from around the globe. With a specialty tag (#Oscars) appropriately done up with a gold trophy next to it, viewers were able to interact with one another, live as the award show was happening. This plays right into the inclusivity that live television is trying to create.

As well as getting the audience involved, celebrities who were at the event even got involved by live tweeting the event. This made for an even more intimate viewing experience, as viewers following along on social media felt as though they were getting fed extra ‘backstage secrets’.

These tweets from celebrities leading up and during the event, gave viewers following from home, a more intimate experience. This aspect of live tv is what makes for a more enjoyable viewing of the event. Viewers however who watched the show after it was recorded, or stumbled across these tweets after the event happened, will however have a different reaction, as it is not happening in the ‘now’.

Live television has become more than just watching an event unfold in real time. The experience that a show’s/event’s team create for the audience has become multidimensional. Allowing audiences to have instant interaction and say on an event helps to increase viewer engagement.

Post live events, big news buzz sites will write full articles, just in reference to the online engagement of the audience. With articles from sites like Buzzfeed appearing almost immediately after the event aired, it’s possible to ‘relive’ the live event.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find a relevant statistic regarding this years Oscar twitter engagement, but according to an article by Recode, following the 2016 Oscars, 24.2 million tweets were sent out during the event. This highlights just how important social media has become when it comes to live tv events.

Live tv is no longer just about the event, it’s about the audience.

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