TV Ratings and Box-Office

I have just read an article on BBC's website about the last weekend's Academy Awards ceremony and it's pretty darn interesting.

Apparently last Sunday's broadcast drew the lowest audience figures (32 million), even lower than the 2003 ceremony which came days after the Iraq invasion. What is also interesting is the fact that the fricking American Idol - otherwise known as the dumbest show on TV - draws 30 million every week. I mean, are we that stupid? I can't fathom how asinine our culture has become that we are obsessed with a program that thrives on insult and "reality"? We must be really cut off from our imaginative side here, because a "reality show" now takes over and becomes the symbol of our cultural psyche. Really scary...

On another note, the same article also points out the box-office numbers for the nominated films: only Juno broke the $100 million mark, whereas the Best Motion Picture of the Year, No Country for Old Men, only returned $64 million. The conclusion drawn by the article is that, because the nominated movies - critically acclaimed all may be - weren't popular enough to garner record-breaking ratings. The 1998 ceremony, where Titanic swept the board, had the highest rating - that is, since the ratings began.