Academy Voters To Serve As Seat-Fillers At March 12 Oscar Show, Plus More Reforms Announced To Membership

deadline.com:

EXCLUSIVE: As a direct result of a  suggestion at the September 17 Academy membership meeting, AMPAS CEO Bill Kramer and President Janet Yang told the 10,000+ group in an email this morning that Academy members without tickets for the actual Oscar show will now be allowed to serve as seat-fillers during the broadcast.The idea came about because the AMPAS member who made the suggestion was frustrated by the annual  lottery for tickets, especially affected the past two years due to restrictions imposed by Covid protocol.

In their email Kramer and Yang also announced that the ticket lottery will be returning for the upcoming 95th Academy Awards, and actually already is in progress for the November 19 Governors Awards.“Regarding the Oscars, we too loved the suggestion to have members serve as seat-fillers.

We will enact this for the March 12 show and will provide information later this fall about seat-filler guidelines and protocols.

In addition, the member lottery will return, with PwC now overseeing the process of vetting and selection. This applies to the Governors Awards lottery already in process,”  the email read.Seat-fillers are traditional jobs at every televised awards show, including the Oscars, where non-famous people are rushed into visible empty seats that may have been temporarily vacated for various reasons by those who have the real tickets.