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Why Don't Movie Studios Advertise During the Oscars?

By Kate TaylorPosted Wednesday, March 27, 2002, at 4:29 PM ET

Millions of movie fans watched the Academy Awards Sunday night. So, why weren't there any movie commercials during the show?

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Because the academy prohibits them, along with ads for anything connected to a movie or to an entertainment company. Movie studios would love to promote their upcoming films to the Oscars audience, but the academy doesn't want to look like it has a cozy relationship with the studios whose movies are up for awards.

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Explainer thanks Rick Robertson of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and Dan Crocker for the question.

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Kate Taylor is the arts reporter at the New York Sun and the editor of an anthology of essays about anorexia, Going Hungry, which will be published next spring.

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Reader Comment From The Fray:

As a quick sidenote to the explanation, affiliates in countries other than the U.S. showed lots of movie trailers. Up here in Canada I got to see the Spiderman trailer for the first time when I watched the Oscars.

--DBR Storyteller

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