ABC remains the only one of the big four broadcast networks shut out of the National Football League broadcast business, but it has a lock on its yearly marquee live TV event for the next 12 years.
Advertisement
Deadline is reporting that Disney-owned ABC has extended its contract with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) allowing the network to broadcast the annual Oscars until 2028.
Ben Sherwood, co-chairman, Disney Media Networks and president, Disney/ABC Television Group, said: “After hosting the Academy Awards more than 50 times, ABC has become the home for Hollywood’s most prestigious and glamorous night of television”.
“We’re honored to continue our storied and successful partnership with ABC in broadcasting the most watched live entertainment event of the year”, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, who was re-elected to a fourth term as Academy President earlier in August, said of the deal via press release.
The Academy Awards first made their way onto the small screen back in 1953 on NBC – a network that would host the event through 1960.
ABC is home to some of the most popular TV series which are watched widely around the world including the likes of shows like Castle, Modern Family, Grey’s Anatomy, Lost, Charlie’s Angels and so on.
“We are elated the Oscars will continue to call ABC home”, Channing Dungey, head of ABC Entertainment, said in a statement. Not surprisingly 2028 will also mark the 100th anniversary of the Academy Awards, which you just know is going to involve all the pomp and circumstance available. Through the new deal, an additional eight years have been tacked onto the companies contract which would have kept the Oscars broadcast on ABC though 2020.
Advertisement
The 89th Academy Awards gala is to take place February 26 at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center in Los Angeles.
