An Oscar statue appears at the 91st Academy Awards Nominees Luncheon, Feb. 4, 2019, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Danny Moloshok/Invision/AP, File)
LOS ANGELES (AP) --
The 97th Academy Awards will be held March 2, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences announced Wednesday.
That moves the annual ceremony up about a week. This year's Oscars were held on March 10. The telecast, which culminated in the best picture win for Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer," was watched by an estimated 19.5 million people, up about 4% from the year prior.
The film academy is also sticking with an earlier start for the awards. Like this year's show, the Oscars will kick off at 7 p.m. Eastern, an hour earlier than they have typically done. ABC will again air the Academy Awards.
The Golden Globes, after signing a new five-year deal with CBS, recently set Jan. 5 as the date for next year's ceremony.
The logo for an Apple TV converter is seen on Oct. 6, 2010, in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)
Apple TV+ is hoping people will make a dent in the Strategic Popcorn Reserve by bingeing its streaming TV and movies for free this weekend in what experts are calling a canny promotion.
The two-day offer this Saturday and Sunday is intended to give viewers a taste of what's behind the Apple paywall and get them hooked, ready to fork over $9.99 a month in the U.S.
Michael D. Smith, a professor of information technology and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, said the two-day window is not too short to ignore and not too long to satisfy all demand.
"This is not 'I'm going to let you binge-watch this over the course of three or four days or a week or a couple weeks and then maybe you won't subscribe next month,'" he said. "This is, 'I'm giving you two days to explore my catalog. And I'm hoping that you're going to find something in there that maybe you'll binge. Maybe you'll have time to binge the first six episodes, but it's so cool you've got to come back and you're going to be willing to subscribe to come back.'"
While entertainment companies often use promotions and discounts to lure new customers, Apple TV+'s pitch has no catches, like entering personal info or credit card numbers. All you need is an Apple ID, which is free and which many people already have from the days of 99-cent song downloads.
What can you see behind the paywall? The Emmy-winning "Ted Lasso" and "The Morning Show" and other buzzy series like "Silo," "Shrinking," "Severance," "Bad Sisters," "Slow Horses," "Disclaimer" and "Presumed Innocent."
Movies include "Fly Me to the Moon," "The Instigators," "Spirited," "Ghosted," "Argylle," Palmer," "Napoleon" and "Killers of the Flower Moon."
Smith suspects that by the end of the weekend,... Read More
