WATCH: The Oscars Go to YouTube
The end of an era, the start of another: what now as the venerable awards show heads to streaming
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Throw one more blockbuster deal on the pile before 2025 comes to a close.
Today, the Academy announced it struck a landmark agreement to begin streaming the Oscars on YouTube starting in 2029 — in addition to making YouTube the official home for a wide range of other Academy events.
The Oscars have aired on ABC for more than 50 years, but the network’s contract with the Academy was up in 2028; the question for years has been whether the Academy would continue trying to make the Oscars work on broadcast despite years of declining ratings, or embrace the leap to digital and try something new.
The Oscar-YouTube deal is the perfect intersection of beats for Like & Subscribe’s Natalie Jarvey and me, so we hopped on Substack Live earlier today to talk about the implications of it all, what might come next and the many questions that remain unanswered, including:
Will there be a new Oscar category for creators?
Will you be able to watch the show if you don’t pay for YouTube TV?
How will they make the commercials work?
Listen to me and Natalie discuss it all, and if you still have questions — and we still have plenty! — send my way: katey@theankler.com. I’m doing a special live mailbag episode with Christopher Rosen on Friday at Prestige Junkie After Party, and we’ll definitely get into all this. Subscribe here and don’t miss it.