The Oscars, MTV and the Cult of the Walking Dead
Bob Lefsetz is an institution. A human battering ram against industry nonsense. A digital town crier hammering out his dispatches from some fortified bunker lined with out-of-print music biz manifestos and the bloodied remains of long-defunct trade magazines. His Lefsetz Letter has been a gospel of brutal truth for over 25 years—equal parts industry autopsy and fiery sermon, delivered with the conviction of a man who is mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. He is read by everyone who matters in music, media, and tech—from Steven Tyler to Lucian Grainge, from backstage at the Aspen Live conference to boardrooms where the last of the old-guard executives are still pretending the CD market is coming back.
You might not agree with him. Hell, you might want to throw your laptop into the sea after reading his take on the latest industry misfire. But you’ll read it. Because no one cuts through the noise like Lefsetz.
Which brings us to his latest broadside—a ruthless dissection of the Oscars, Hollywood’s annual self-congratulatory death march, and its desperate refusal to acknowledge that it has become the cinematic equivalent of a landline phone. He’s right, of course. But this is not a case of tweaking the format, swapping out hosts, or throwing a few TikTok influencers onto the red carpet to jolt the comatose beast back to life. No, this is deeper, uglier, and far more terminal. The Academy Awards are not just dying. They’re rotting in real-time, like a once-glorious edifice crumbling under the weight of its own irrelevance.
The problem isn’t that young people aren’t watching. It’s that nobody cares. The Oscars are no longer a cultural event—they're a mausoleum tour for an industry still trying to convince itself it matters. A Hollywood that’s been bleeding out for a decade, choking on its own self-importance while TikTok kids gobble up content like locusts on a wheat field. You’re not competing with Marvel anymore, you’re competing with a 22-second video of some kid deep-frying a sneaker. And you’re losing.
The Academy still thinks it holds the keys to the kingdom. The Oscars used to be a national spectacle, a three-hour commercial for an industry that mattered. That’s because Hollywood was making things that defined the culture. The Godfather didn’t just win Oscars, it embedded itself in the DNA of America. You think Oppenheimer is doing that? You think people are arguing about The Holdovers at a bar in Cleveland? Hell no. Half the country thinks Barbie is a documentary.
The problem isn’t just distribution. It’s not just that people don’t want to sit through four hours of dead-eyed actors pretending they still believe in the magic of the movies. It’s that the whole goddamn industry is caught in a feedback loop of denial. The Oscars don’t need a new host. They need an exorcism.
MTV had the right idea—for a while, anyway. Reinvent, chase the youth, stay fresh. And it worked, until it didn’t. Then they lost the thread. They started believing their own press, tried to turn themselves into a reality TV cesspool, and eventually got swallowed whole by the internet. That’s the road Hollywood is on right now.
You can’t out-youth the youth. The music industry learned that the hard way. The entire star-making apparatus has been obliterated by a generation raised on infinite choice. The same thing is happening to movies. The old guard thought they could keep the castle intact by just moving the party to streaming. But you can’t sell exclusivity in a world where everything is free and instant.
The biggest lie Hollywood tells itself is that people still care about the magic of the big screen. They don’t. The only thing the masses care about is whether the thing in front of them is compelling enough to keep them from scrolling to the next thing.
Boomers want to keep the Oscars alive because they can’t let go of the myth. The same way they can’t let go of vinyl or radio or the idea that the newspaper is coming back. They want to believe in prestige. But prestige is dead. Everything is disposable now, even the movies that win Best Picture.
People don’t invest in movies anymore. They consume them. They mainline them like junkies on an endless content binge, then move on without a second thought. Ask anyone under 40 what won Best Picture last year. Ask them who won Best Actor. They don’t know. They don’t care. The whole idea of winning an Oscar is like winning a medal in a war nobody remembers fighting.
The Oscars aren’t just out of touch. They’re irrelevant. They’re a VHS tape in a streaming world. A fax machine in a world of AI.
The only way to save the Oscars is to burn them down and start over. No more three-hour telecasts. No more awkward speeches from actors pretending they’re curing cancer. No more pretense. Make it a wild, unhinged spectacle. Let the winners fight for their trophies in a battle royale. Make it interactive. Let the audience vote in real time. Set up an octagon and let Scorsese and Nolan go ten rounds for Best Director.
Nobody’s watching because nothing is at stake. The Oscars are playing for an audience that has already left the building. The people running Hollywood are still acting like it’s 1998. They think if they just tweak the format, they can trick people into caring again.
They can’t.
The future isn’t in fixing the Oscars. The future is in admitting they don’t matter.