Who didn't watch the Oscars?

Men, that's who. Only 36 percent of the broadcast viewers on ABC were male, tying the show’s all-time lowest popularity among men, Alex Ben Block reports at Hollywood Today. Block columnizes:

The movie industry’s biggest night is now primarily aimed at only half the population, capping the potential audience, and even driving some viewers away. Indeed, the largest movie-going audience is young men, an audience segment effectively disenfranchised on this years’ Oscarcast.

It may actually be worse than that. This year’s telecast arguably put straight men off the show and the Motion Picture Academy needs to take note of the gender imbalance in the telecast. This is not a knock on the charms of Ellen DeGeneres but it does raise questions about what first time producer Laura Ziskin was thinking. She produced an elegant show but she is also the one who determined which categories to announce and she set the pacing of the over-stuffed telecast, like a vain lady trying to fit into a dress three sizes too small.

Ziskin had said before the telecast that it would not come in at the budgeted length of three hours. In fact it ran nearly four hours. None of the major awards were presented until nearly an hour in, which came after three hours plus of pre-show fashion coverage and pseudo-analysis about whose glad rags were the best, across on multiple channels. It is no surprise that tested the patience of straight males who just want to know who won.