• by Shankar Gupta , March 1, 2005

The 77th Academy Awards ceremony produced significant pre-show hype, which led to its highest ratings since 2000--but, according to some buzz-monitoring firms, the show left many viewers feeling lukewarm.

"From a marketing perspective, it worked. All the changes they made caused a lot of discussion, and the whole Chris Rock, 'How will he perform' question created a lot of buzz," said Pete Snyder, CEO and founder of New Media Strategies. "It really drove the ratings."

But after people tuned in and watched, Snyder said, people were "generally disappointed" by the quality of the broadcast.

Snyder's firm, New Media Strategies, employed a team of analysts to scour the Web for commentary on thousands of entertainment and mainstream blogs and community sites, looking for any Oscar-related discussion, as well as buzz-monitoring software that watches over 100,000 blogs and community sites.

The selection of Chris Rock as the host of the show and the changes made to the show's format piqued viewers' curiosity, said Snyder. But viewers were left disappointed after Rock didn't produce any controversy. "What we're seeing is the people think he started strong, and then just blew it towards the end," Snyder said. "Even though they got a ratings spike out of him, I wouldn't count on him being there next year."

It didn't help the Oscars' cause that the winners were fairly predictable, with no big upsets. "People feel that there were no huge shocks. The fact that 'Million Dollar Baby' really dominated 'The Aviator' is causing a lot of discussion, but there were no real shocks," Snyder said. "The pre-hype drove ratings; everyone felt that it was a little shorter, which was nice, but no real standouts."

Ultimately, however, Snyder said that the tepid post-buzz on the show is, for the most part, irrelevant to ABC and its advertisers. "From a tactical perspective, so long as you have the ratings there, ABC and their advertisers are going to be happy," he said.