Oscar is not just an award it's a symbol, symbol of excellence, symbol of achievement and symbol of a creative peak. No one questions the credibility of Oscars or its judgement because all the categories we see in Oscar are well thought and represent some kind of creative excellence. But its new 'Popular Film' category is nothing more than a panic decision from the management side.
The question remains the same, why they added such a category which is affecting the reputation of Oscars? The answer is not that difficult. In fact, it is quite simple. The straightforward answer is, "To Increase Viewership". The audience for academy awards has been dropping over the past few years. From 2014 to 2017, it dropped by 39%.
The Oscar management decided to give what the audience wants, i.e., popular stars and what can be better option to get popular stars than to nominate a movie which is watched by a large number of audience. They will look to the box office collection to decide the nomination under the popular film category because of which, films like Black Panther and Stars Warshas also got nominated in Oscar 2019. According to the management, this will increase the no. of audience watching the awards at their home.
There is nothing wrong in adding a popular film category, but if they add something they will surely deduct some screen time from other categories and it is expected they will cut the screen time from Technicals and other related categories which is not a good thing to do.
Overall this decision may increase the viewership, but at the same time, it can blur the line between Oscars and other Awards. Oscar's management needs to keep in mind that dropping rate of the audience can be tackled, but if the Oscar will let go its reputation which it earned, that can be a bigger problem which may take a lifetime to recover.
