The Chicago Tribune's "15 Ways to Fix the Oscars":
Choosing Jon Stewart as host is a fine start to improve the ever-sagging Oscar telecast. But, hey, don't stop there. The Tempo Subcommittee To Preserve Awards Shows has 15 more suggestions:
1. No musical numbers. No, really. Seriously. Unless they're performed by the academy's accountants -- that might be entertaining.
2. Live voting on the best Oscar gown, with a show the next night crowning the winners and losers. It works for "American Idol" and "Dancing With the Stars." And all we really care about is the fashion anyway.
3. No more than 20 "Brokeback Mountain" jokes. We're eager to see what Stewart and his crew will do with the gay cowboy movie, but we're thinking some sort of quota might be healthy.
4. Move telecast to HBO. The more profanities, the better.
5. Skip the best song award; instead, nominees get bus tickets to Grammy Awards.
6. Install a trapdoor behind the podium for long-winded winners. The orchestra playing loudly just isn't working.
7. Shorten the show: Two hours tops. It notoriously runs more than three hours, sometimes four. So, at 1 hour, 59 minutes, the orchestra starts playing. Sixty seconds later, cut to commercial. If that doesn't leave enough time for best picture award, save it for next year.
8. Get Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell to present. They saved "SNL," didn't they?
9. Kathy Griffin has been kicked off the E! red-carpet broadcast in favor of Ryan Seacrest, which is just wrong on so many levels. How about putting Griffin inside the auditorium as a roving correspondent? Because egomaniac stars just think her pomposity-puncturing humor is sooooo funny.
10. Show audience shots that cover more than just the front rows. How many close-ups of Joaquin Phoenix and Charlize Theron will we need? Where's Johnny Knoxville sitting?
11. Have Prof. John Frink (scientist geek on "The Simpsons") announce the technical achievement awards.
12. The academy president doesn't need to talk. He just doesn't.
13. Eliminate scripted banter. What's the point of pairing Shirley MacLaine and Don Cheadle as presenters if they just read lame material from a teleprompter. Let them wing it and add some suspense to the evening.
14. Let Jon Stewart protege Stephen Colbert interview stars on the red carpet, presenting them with an ego that is way bigger than even the most overpaid actor's.
15. More cowbell!
