Yesterday’s Oscars were notable for two different fights: ABC vs. Cablevision and Hurt Locker vs. Avatar.  The first of these is a perfect illustration of what I call “fighting over the digital pie.” The reason things got so vicious between ABC and Cablevision and resolved only slightly past the last minute (as far as Oscar coverage goes) is simple: dollars from TV distribution (carriage fees) are shrinking and everyone wants a bigger piece while there is still something to be had.

It is completely clear that over some time all of this will move to streaming and the big winner will be the Academy itself (or anyone else actually originating live content).  This will take a while, but TV networks at best don’t add much (NBC coverage of the winter Olympics?) and cable is purely a pipe.  At home we sampled the Red Carpet coverage on a high quality stream from ABC.com which showed how irrelevant Cablevision is other than as a bandwidth provider.  Even the actual Oscars we were able to quickly find a bunch of illegal streams (of much reduced quality, but the opportunity for the Oscars to go direct is real).

The second fun fight of the night was between Hurt Locker and Avatar.  Despite my having been a rabid fan boy for Avatar, I was not surprised to see Hurt Locker clean up.  For starters, it is an excellent movie.  The criticism that it is an unrealistic depiction of war is, in my view, misguided.  Hurt Locker is a character study of extreme risk taking, not an Iraq war documentary.  What made both Hurt Locker and Avatar attractive as Oscar contenders is that they were made by directors on their own terms (and of course it provided some extra frisson to know that Kathryn Bigelow had been married to James Cameron).

But the voting was no surprise.  First, I doubt that members of the Academy have forgiven Cameron for his “King of the World” acceptance speech for Titanic.  Second, everyone can see themselves as coming up with a movie such as Hurt Locker eventually, whereas Avatar – by virtue of its budget alone – is seen as an extreme one-off (at least until the next one comes along).  Third, Oscar voting has always had an element of it is “someone’s turn” and a female director was a good fit for that.

All in all - by far the most entertaining Oscars in a long time.  And that didn’t even require watching the actual show!