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The Oscars may get blitzed by the NFL. The producers behind the biggest night in movies (well, except for the MTV Movie Awards), are considering moving the Academy Awards from its Sunday night seat to Monday nights in order to avoid competition from the National Football League.
According to Variety, Oscar runners are keeping a close eye on the negotiations between NFL owners and players over a new collective bargaining agreement that could add two games to the regular season, which could push the Super Bowl to the same night as the Oscars.
Unnamed sources told the magazine that the expansion from 16 to 18 games will almost certainly begin with the 2012-13 season. However, the shift will probably not result in NFL action starting earlier, because scorching August preseason games and scheduling conflicts with Major League Baseball's regular-season action are not desirable to the league. The NFL will likely continue to start its regular season just after Labor Day, which would kick the playoffs into February.
If that scenario unfolds, then the Super Bowl — typically held the first Sunday in February — could air on the same night as the 2013 Academy Awards in late February. The executive director of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, Bruce Davis, said he's keeping an eye on the NFL situation and is prepared to possibly shift the Oscars back to Monday, the night on which the show aired for decades before moving to Sunday in 1999.
"Yes, it's a concern for us," Davis said of the NFL scenario, noting that the academy and football league have had some back-channel discussions, though he doubted the NFL would take the needs of the Hollywood awards show into consideration when making its decision on the new schedule.
"I think our inclination would be to go earlier rather than later, but we need to see," Davis said of possibly moving the show to a Monday in February rather than back to the first week of March in order to avoid the most-viewed program of the year. "There's no rule it has to be on a Sunday ... we're looking at a lot of different options."
The Oscar-cast has moved around quite a bit over the years, shifting up to February in 2004 after complaints about the too-long awards season and moving back a week twice in the past six years to avoid competing with the Winter Olympics.
The NFL expansion could also affect the Grammys, which also air in February, although a scheduling shift for that awards show is unlikely.
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