Shock drop in Oscar ratings, Anne Hathaway & James Franco to blame?

Copyright A.M.P.A.S

We didn't see this one coming but the 2011 Oscar ratings have slipped 7% year on year and now people are looking for someone to blame.

The hosts would be an easy target because often it is them who bring a large audience to watch the Oscars. Whether audiences are film enthusiasts or bus drivers, the Oscar hosts do have a relative impact like Ricky Gervais had on the Golden Globes.

Ricky Gervais was a guaranteed controversy at the show, ensuring that the ceremony would go viral ahead of time if his antics got into the blogosphere.

Fast forward to James Franco and Anne Hathaway, who are getting so far, mixed reviews. Should we blame them? There are other factors at large, including the films in selection. Avatar was in the Oscar running last year, and was the world s biggest film on record. The audiences for that film alone were huge, and so that could explain the fall, as The Social Network and The King's Speech were not blockbuster choices.

Reaction to Anne Hathaway and James Franco

But the ceremony, which awarded the best picture prize to "The King's Speech," slipped just 2% among viewers ages 18 to 49. That may have been thanks to Hathaway and Franco, the youngest co-hosts in Oscar history and an effort by the academy, as Hathaway alluded to in an early joke, to be "appealing" to a youthful demographic. - Latimes

Even the sight of James Franco in drag felt like something we'd all seen before. Because, well, we had. - WashingtonPost

Come on: James Franco was kind of brilliant last night. He treated the Oscars like his own avant-garde conceptual art project. - RollingStone

"Anne Hathaway at least tried to sing and dance and preen along to the goings on, but Franco seemed distant, uninterested and content to keep his Cheshire-cat-meets-smug smile on display throughout." Hollywoodreporter