Usually when you turn on the tube, you can be fairly certain what you are going to see—you know a show’s genre, actors, and reputation and even supposedly unscripted reality television rarely bucks expectations.

Enter the Academy Awards.

Some years it’s great and other years David Letterman hosts. That’s part of the fun and one reason an average of nearly 45 million viewers tune in every year—we crave the potential to catch Madonna yelling at the sound tech after her microphone failed to emerge from the floor; we love the behind-the-scenes stories of Russell Crowe intentionally mucking the names of best actress nominees; we revel in Tom Hanks’ unintentional outing of his high school drama teacher; we merrily cringe at Antonio’s atonal duet with Santana.

What will happen this year? Who knows, but we hope it will be memorable—for better or for worse!

And that’s generally what this equation measures: how high were dramatic expectations and were they met? Kudos to originality, glitz and glamour, and woe be unto retrospectives and politicized acceptance speeches. Let's see how this year's Oscars stack up.

The Oscartronic 2007



• V= In millions, the number of Oscar viewers

• $= In millions the combined box office take of Best Picture nominees

• H= How good was the host? (1-10 with 10 being “Billy Crystal improvs off Jack Palance” and 1 being “David Letterman’s ‘Uma meet Oprah; Oprah meet Uma’ flop”)

• O= How many truly original moments were there? (Three-6 Mafia, Palance does push-ups, etc.)

• D= How many total disasters were there?

• E= How would you rank the energy on the floor (1-10 with 10 being “Richard Simmons”)

• M= Strength and pageantry of musical numbers (1-10 with 10 being “Rolling Stones” and 1 being “Barney”)

• A= Minutes used in achievement awards and career retrospectives

• P= Number of politicized acceptance speeches