Another year, another protracted, monotonous Oscars® ceremony. I can’t speak for Tyler or Jon, but I find The Oscars® to be mostly irrelevant these days. Not from a marketer’s standpoint, of course; an Oscar® nomination or win is perhaps the best free promotional boost a film can secure. Rather, it’s the award’s prestige that has found itself tarnished, and the trophy’s honor that has slowly dwindled away. Apparently the viewing public shares this sentiment, as this year’s Oscars® telecast snagged the lowest ratings in the show’s history.

It’s not breaking news that Academy member voting patterns have become increasingly formulaic and predictable over the years. More alarming to me is the Academy’s growing tendency to praise awful films, as long as they contain contemporary themes, in a half-assed attempt at remaining relevant to a younger generation. For evidence of this phenomenon, I refer you to 2005’s Best Picture winner, the heavy-handed and condescending racial awareness seminar Crash, as well as this year’s teenage hipster fodder Juno, which found itself nominated in several categories it didn’t belong (i.e., any category with the word “best” in the title). Luckily, the only breakout indie hit of 2006 was actually good (Little Miss Sunshine), or we’d have a 3-year streak of terrible indie films being either nominated for, or winning, Best Picture. This might be a good place to mention how grateful I am Juno did not win Best Picture this year, or I might be in the hospital right now with a brain aneurysm.

But negative criticism without accompanying positive advice isn’t very useful, so I’ll also offer a few suggestions to the Academy.

• First, cut down the show’s lengthy runtime. Less is more. Get rid of all the montages nobody cares about, and get rid of half the host’s monologue. The musical numbers also have to go. There, you just saved the show an hour.

• Second, throw out some of the smaller awards. Many of the technical awards are given out in separate ceremonies before the telecast, and the same should be done for many of the less glitzy categories that are currently included in the big show. The Academy should absolutely continue to give the awards out in an official ceremony; these people deserve to be recognized. It just shouldn’t be a part of the main Oscar telecast beyond a quick recap of who won what. The only thing people want to tune in to watch are the awards for categories they can talk about the next day around the water cooler.

• Third, more about this water cooler thing: people want something to talk about. I never thought I’d say this, but take a cue from MTV’s award shows (damn, I feel so dirty suggesting that) and stick prestenters together who clearly don’t like each other. Or let Lohan get coked up and send her out to present something. People don’t want to see the show go off without a hitch. Morbid? Possibly. True? Definitely.

• Last, and most importantly, AMPAS®: stop being so damn formulaic with your voting choices. The reason I always do so well in Oscar® prediction pools is because I’ve read two or three of the dozens of books on how to choose Oscar® winners based on established patterns, and these books are remarkably accurate. Quit giving awards to the same types of films over and over.

But who knows if these suggestions would actually do anything to increase interest in the Oscars® at this point. Awards shows in general are a dying breed. People just don’t get riled up over celebrities slapping each other on the ass in nationally televised ceremonies like they used to. But I have to ask the Academy: what do you have to lose? The ratings can’t get much lower from here. Make some wild changes and see what sticks.