Sorry Searchers, Oscars Live Stream Was MIA

Our apologies to the thousands of you who came here seeking information about how to watch the Oscars online. While the Academy did live stream its nominations this year, there was no such love for the actual awards ceremony.

On Oscar.com, you’ll find videos in these categories: “Thank You Cam,” “Nominated Films,” “Sid’s Video Blog,” and “Road to the Oscars.” Nope, no red carpet or on-stage footage, and the video player won’t load on my Mac. The only new content on the Oscars’ YouTube account in the last couple days is a videoblog about the final countdown to the event, with external embedding disabled. Meanwhile, YouTube was quick to remove non-authorized videos of the event, as Scott Kirsner details.

We had complained about this situation last year, and hoped this year would be different. Apparently a lot of you did too, considering the amount of search referrals we got for “Oscars live,” “Oscars live stream,” “Oscars 2008 streaming,” et cetera. Sorry to disappoint.

Karina, over at her day job, suggests that satisfying online demand for clips would help increase the Oscars’ terrible ratings.

[T]his kind of thing has got to be one explanation for last night’s show doing so poorly. The new generation of celebrity porn addicts don’t even know they’re supposed to obsess about the Oscars, because the Perez Hiltons of the world are instead blogging about Jennifer Aniston’s frozen eggs, because at least they have visual aids for that.