The Academy Awards are leaving broadcast television. Or broadcast television is getting rid of the Academy Awards. Either way, the network television event that has been seen on ABC for five decades is moving to YouTube TV, owned by Google. The deal calls for the awards show to stay on ABC through 2 028, the 100th anniversary of this pinnacle of Hollywood success. From 2029 through 2033 it will be seen on YouTube, “for free globally and on YouTube TV in the U.S.,” according to the company. YouTube TV, if you’re not familiar with it, is a subscription streaming service that will deliver your favorite channels to your phone, tablet, computer, smart TV or game console for a monthly fee of about $80. NFL football is extra. It’s more complicated than broadcast TV, which doesn’t have a troubleshooting page or need one. YouTube TV’s support page offers lengthy solutions to common problems such as “I can hear audio, but I don’t see the video” and “I’m not getting local stations on my TV.” Some subscribers are “having issues watching YouTube on my Roku player” while others have the same problem “on my Apple TV.” YouTube TV is separate from the YouTube site you can watch on the internet for free, which was always the price of television programming when the goal was to deliver the largest possible audience to advertisers. At some point between Johnny Carson and Jimmy Kimmel, watching broadcast television began to feel like mandatory classwork in a political re-education camp. Ratings dropped as much of the audience fled to friendlier territory.  The entire entertainment industry seemed to put up a “No Conservatives Need Apply” sign, both on the set and in the seats. In 2016, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization that hands out the Oscars, abruptly announced new rules to revoke the lifetime voting rights of members who were “inactive.” This was defined as not having worked in ten years. The withholding of ballots from longtime Oscar voters was a knee-jerk response to criticism after two years in a row without a nomination for an actor “of color.”  But insulting longtime members of the Academy by implying that they were a bunch of white supremacists didn’t solve the Academy’s problem, which was that the organization was being criticized for racism in Hollywood but had no control over what movies were made, who was hired for them or what color they were. So in 2024, the Academy imposed new “Representation and Inclusion Standards” that said no film could be nominated for Best Picture unless it met at least two of four standards. The first was ”On-Screen Representation, Themes and Narratives.” This could be satisfied if a lead actor or “significant” supporting actor was from an “underrepresented racial or ethnic group,” or if “at least 30% of actors not submitted for Oscar consideration” were from “at least two underrepresented groups.” These groups were described as women, LGBTQ+, people with cognitive or physical disabilities or who are deaf or hard of hearing, or belonging to a specified racial or ethnic group. Bhutanese, Mongolian, Nepali and Laotian are among the qualified ethnicities on the list. Lacking that, the main storyline of the film could be centered on “at least one” of those “underrepresented groups.” The other “standards” call for specific numbers of people from the “underrepresented groups” to have worked on the film’s “creative leadership” team or other top jobs on the set, or to have been given “industry access and opportunities” in the film business, or to be working as “in-house senior executives” in marketing and publicity. A film might be brilliant, compelling and original, but if it didn’t check enough of these boxes, it could not be nominated for Best Picture. The problem is obvious. You can make a picture about a deaf Bhutanese man who decides to become a nun but you can’t make anybody pay $17 to see it. The television ratings for the Academy Awards have languished at historically low levels. Variety reported that the 2025 show drew 18.1 million viewers, no longer “garnering the ratings of yesteryear.” Why? Maybe because the glittering participants routinely walk to the microphone and insult half the country over political differences. Or because films are nominated for the DEI characteristics of the in-house senior marketing executives. Or because the show is very, very long. The YouTube deal won’t fix that last problem. YouTube TV has no time constraints, so the show can run for 13 hours. You may need that much time to figure out why YouTube TV isn’t working on your Roku. Related Articles Drug-war chest-pounding will cost lives, erode our liberties Heading into 2026, Democrats are on the brink of success – and self-sabotage Trump’s word games can’t conceal the murderous reality of his anti-drug strategy Jon Coupal: What Sacramento could learn from ALEC SoCal GOP delegation rejects limits on Trump’s hostilities in Latin America There was another annual television institution that left network TV after 50 years. The Miss America Pageant was dropped by ABC in 2004 due to declining ratings. It spent some time in the wilderness of obscure cable channels before returning to ABC in 2011. It was dropped again in 2019, and went to NBC in 2020 for what became its final network television appearance. In 2022 you could stream Miss America on PageantsLive.com if you subscribed for $32.99 per month. How much would you pay to watch the Academy Awards? Or would they have to pay you? As part of the Academy’s deal with YouTube, Google Arts Culture will digitize the Academy Collection, more than 52 million items including films, photos, posters, screenplays, props and costumes. That could be a great resource for researchers and film lovers. Or it could be the world’s biggest AI-scrape of the likenesses, voices and creative work of everyone in Hollywood history. Thanks to AI, Gloria Swanson can play a deaf Bhutanese man. Give her the Oscar. 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