The Academy Awards are changing the way their ceremony will be run in three drastic ways over the next two years. Dakota goes over the pros and cons for each of these changes.

First- The date of the ceremony will be changed from the end of February to the beginning of February starting in 2020. What this means for when nominations are announced to what other awards shows will do is still up in the air, but this impact will be felt across the industry.

Second- The show will be capped at a hard three hours, meaning that some things will need to be cut out with the Academy already announcing that some categories (at the moment unnamed) will be handed out during commercial breaks and will be shown in a montage at the end of ceremony. Other changes to ensure the time length have not been announced yet.

Third- There will a Best Popular Film award handed out next to the Best Picture award. As far as the rules surrounding what makes a film “popular” have not been announced but the fall out from this will be felt as it will change the landscape of what the award means, what types of films will be nominated and how it will affect smaller films.

For further reading check out Vulture “The Oscars Made Some Dumb Decisions Today” and Forbes “New Category For Popular Movies Will Help Disney Rule The Oscars”. You can also check out Box Office Mojo and their list of highest grossing films of the year so far to see some potential nominees.

Something new I’ll be asking people to do is to rate and review Contra Zoom on Podchaser, a site that aims to be the IMDb of podcasts. Please rate 5 stars and if possible leave a short review to help grow this show.

Also if you have never given the show a rating on iTunes, that also helps tremendously. Every bit of exposure helps grow the show.

Follow the show @ContraZoomPod and Dakota @Dgapa on Twitter.