Facing continued pressure from Academy members, industry guilds and high profile Hollywood celebrities, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences caved yet again and decided to back down on one of their proposed changes to this year’s Oscar telecast format. After announcing last week that the awards for Cinematography, Film Editing, Live Action Short, and Makeup and Hairstyling would be presented during commercial breaks, they have released a statement reassuring everyone that this is no longer the case. All awards will, in fact, be treated equally. The official statement is as follows:

“The Academy has heard the feedback from its membership regarding the Oscar presentation of four awards – Cinematography, Film Editing, Live Action Short, and Makeup and Hairstyling. All Academy Awards will be presented without edits, in our traditional format. We look forward to Oscar Sunday, February 24.”

Following the initial backlash, the Academy tried to clarify their plans by stating that (a) these awards would still be shown later in the telecast but in an abbreviated format, and that (b) the next year a different set of categories would be selected for this treatment. Unfortunately for them, social media had already propagated the story that the four categories would not be shown at all and they could not do much to convince anyone otherwise. Clearly, attempting to tweak and improve the Academy Awards is not an easy task and almost seems futile at this point. Do you think they made the right decision?