The Motion Picture Academy has decided to forego giving traditional Oscar awards in the customary categories and instead decided some major award changes are needed. Next year’s awards will honor and present awards to the scientists, engineers, technicians, and critical support staff who have made COVID vaccines and related medical advances possible.

Why the dramatic shift? The Academy spokesperson cited several reasons:

First, the relevance of Hollywood celebrities in most people’s lives has been greatly overshadowed by the life-saving role of these professionals.

Second, many celebrities are feeling somewhat guilty about seeking the limelight while so many of these technology specialists labor anonymously to devise lifesaving medications such as vaccines.

Third, they also recognize the important of the extremely sophisticated lab instruments, robotics, production lines, and more that it takes to go from test tube and lab batch to volume production.

Finally, the spokesperson acknowledged that “the award-ceremony ratings have been declining and we need something to boost them, and this may be just the way to do so.” Nielsen rating numbers show that viewership of the Academy Award ceremony was down from 23.6 million in 2020 to 10.4 million in 2021, an astonishing 51% plunge to the already-falling numbers for the major award events (see figure).

Read more articles in the 2022 April 1st series in the Humor topic within our Series Library.