telecast

The history of the Academy Awards telecast has been generally a pretty traditional show. You've had historic moments of bad taste like Rob Lowe dancing with Snow White, bizarre musical opening numbers from the likes of Lucie Arnaz and Liza Minnelli -- not together -- and, of course, great highs like most of the Billy Crystal musical medleys of the Best Oscar nominees.

This year if Billy were there, his medley would be about 20 minutes long to include all ten nominated movies! They'd have needed an oxygen tank in the wings to revive him after that.

But here's a wickedly wild idea that might have set the Oscars into to fierce wilderness of 'oh-my-God' TV. The Oscar producers were toying with the idea of having Sacha Baron Cohen host the show. Yep, believe it. Producers Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic were on NPR's 'Fresh Air' with Teri Gross, and they said when they contemplated shaking up the broadcast, they thought of 'Borat.'

There's something a little unnerving about the fact that the Primetime Emmys float. Not the award statuette itself. No, that would be like an anchor in the water. I'm talking about the date for the Emmys. The 2010 Primetime Emmys will be on Sunday, August 29, on NBC. The 2009 Primetime Emmys, lest you forgot already, were September 20. The date of the Emmys floats around depending on which network is broadcasting the show.

NBC has a steady date with the NFL on Sunday nights during football season. NBC Football Night in America in the network's top-rated show. The top. Number one. That means there's no way that the Peacock was going to give up a Sunday night game for the Primetime Emmy broadcast.

So, using their power, the network simply declared that the 62nd Primetime Emmy Awards will be held in August. They pulled this same stunt in 2006, so the folks at NATAS (the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences) weren't stunned.