1) Tame the cash monster

Every year, it's the same complaint by the movie and media elite: Too much money is spent on Oscar campaigns. And, just as in politics, the argument can be made that the money perverts the election process. But the counterargument follows that there's no way to control what studios, production companies, distributors and sometimes even the talent themselves spend to push their product or performance for an Academy Award. On the one hand, there's the free-speech, free-market dilemma. On the other, there's the controversy over why it's impossible to know specifically how much is spent to promote a movie for an Oscar, and how much is spent to promote the movie in general.

Given that only movies shown during a given calendar year are eligible for Academy Awards consideration, it would stand to reason that the film industry would spend all its general promotion and advertising dollars by Dec. 31. Not so. Even on its own Web site, the motion picture academy establishes that Oscar campaigning kicks off each November and continues through the day in March of the next year when final ballots are due.

For instance, certain pictures in December are platformed (translation: shown in just one or two major markets, usually New York and Los Angeles) in order to be eligible for the Academy Awards, but then aren't opened wide (translation: in a theater near you) until after Jan. 1. In other cases, Oscar-eligible movies that opened earlier in the year now have video and DVD versions hitting the marketplace after Jan. 1. And none of this includes the various contractual obligations, made to satisfy the egos of "talent," that force studios and others to spend large amounts on Oscar promotion for even the year's worst films.

Given the money murkiness, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences stands idly by watching the spending levels soar. But even allowing the studios their free hand with general promotion, there is indeed a way for the Academy of Arts and Sciences to place a specific cap Oscar campaign spending. The key lies in the registered trademarks and copyrights owned by the governing body for phrases like "Oscar," "Academy Awards," "Oscar Night" or the statuette itself.

All the academy has to do is enact new rules differentiating between general media publicity and Oscar-targeted media publicity between Nov. 1 and the following March, and then decide on a set maximum figure for Oscar-specific promotion to be spent on any one film. This differentiation could run the gamut from network TV, cable, radio, newspaper, magazine, and Internet advertising to media kits, books, toys, gadgets and all the other ancillary crap that pours out of Hollywood only to end up in landfills or on eBay.

Since most of this campaigning is concentrated on academy voting members living in Hollywood and New York, a small team of academy-hired accountants could easily keep track of the spending for every film (this year there were 248 eligible feature-length films) -- although admittedly it does get trickier when those big media companies employ synergistic cross-promotions for their movies.

On the simplest level, say a studio buys a full-page ad in the New York Times for "Big Budget Extravaganza" on Jan. 15. If anywhere in that ad, the registered trademarks and/or copyrighted property belonging to the academy are mentioned or pictured, then the media buy counts as Oscar campaigning. If not, it's general publicity. (To work, this would have to include publicity containing quotes from film journalists and critics that mention the academy's trademarks and/or copyrighted property.)

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