OSCAR TELECAST TO FACE NBA ALL-STAR GAME

The Academy Awards telecast may find it exceedingly difficult this year to retain its position as the second-most-watched telecast of the year after the Super Bowl. Orlando Sentinel columnist Hal Boedeker points out that the awards telecast will not get the free ride that it normally gets each year, since it will face TNT’s coverage of the NBA All-Star Game. Thus far, the highest-rated entertainment show of the year has been the Grammy Awards, which counted nearly 40 million viewers. Boedeker also alludes to the fact that only one of the nine films nominated for best picture (The Help) was a big hit at the box office. He notes that getting viewers to watch an Oscar telecast that does not include the top movies of the year “will be daunting. If they won’t go to the multiplex,” he writes, “why will they sit through the Oscars, usually a marathon bore?”