5 Steps to Fixing the Oscars

The Oscars tried really hard for a broader appeal this year—10 best picture nominees! A Neil Patrick Harris appearance!—but even so, Ramin Setoodeh is "having trouble remembering anything that happened during the lethargic 210-minute ceremony." He offers five ways the Oscars can really improve in the future in Newsweek:

• Hire hosts who are actually funny: Joining the now decade-long tradition of hosts who have bombed, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin “opened the show like the old uncles at your family reunion.”

• Keep the clips, but keep them short: Omitting the 15-second acting clips, shown when a nominee is announced, is not a good idea. But neither is what the Academy did this year, showing “a clip long enough to be a movie trailer, spliced together like a YouTube mash-up.”
• Skip the tween presenters: “Do we really think fans of Miley Cyrus and Amanda Seyfried are going to sit through the whole boring telecast to catch a glimpse of their idols in fancy gowns? They have Twitter for that.”
• Slash the boring categories: Or at least award them off camera. Likely candidates for the ax: best sound mixing, best sound editing, best costume design, best visual effects, "or any award with the word ‘short’ in it."
• Incorporate a public vote: No, not on the actual categories. On anything. “People just want to be invested—this is why Idol is the No. 1 show on TV.”

(More Oscars stories.)