OSCAR TELECAST: STRIKE MAY RAISE CURIOSITY FACTOR, BUT TITANIC NUMBERS ARE UNLIKELY (VAR, GD)

By Nancy Tartaglione-Vialatte

Hollywood may be rallying behind Sunday's Oscar telecast with renewed passion, but will the film biz's fervor extend to the rest of the world's TV viewers? Both Variety and Gold Derby pose the question of how the show will fare this year given the strike’s impact and the films in contention.

Each year, US viewership rises and falls depending on the films. And this year’s top nominees - "No Country for Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood" – are unlikely to draw numbers that, say, 1998’s "Titanic" ceremony pulled in.

Indeed, the show tends to draw its largest audiences when a popular film dominates the major awards. The largest of the past 30 years was 1998 when "Titanic" won and scored 55.25 million viewers.

Conversely, the smallest Oscar audience on record (33.04 million) was in 2003, a year when a musical, "Chicago," topped a field that included lightly watched films including "Gangs of New York" and "The Hours," notes Variety.

The top-grossing best-picture contender is "Juno" with a worldwide cume of $134 million, which, although great for an indie does not exactly put it in the same league as "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" (which has two nominations and a box office gross of nearly $1 billion).

Still, over the years, the Academy Awards has proved to be a durable ratings performer. Last year's kudocast averaged 40.17 million viewers, up from the previous year (38.94 million).

This year, Academy voters bypassed the chance to nominate such stars as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, but the Academy and producer Gil Cates have smartly ratcheted up the star quotient with its presenters, notes Variety.

Movie stars like George Clooney, Cameron Diaz, Harrison Ford, Tom Hanks, Nicole Kidman and Denzel Washington will be on hand along with movie stars familiar to TV viewers: Steve Carell, Patrick Dempsey, Katherine Heigl and Miley Cyrus.

However, notes Gold Derby, the fact that Jon Stewart will host isn't encouraging. The last time he emceed, he presided over the second-lowest-rated show in Oscar history.