For The First Time In Thirty Years, The Oscars Won't Have A Host

After weeks of back and forth nonsense with Kevin Hart, it's finally settled: the 91st Academy Awards will not have a host. Unless, of course, the Academy changes their minds again at the last minute – but at this point, we're only 46 days from the ceremony, and asking anyone to take such a high-profile job with so little time to prepare seems near-impossible.

A new report says the ceremony will go host-less for the first time in three decades. Learn more about what we can expect from this year's Oscars below.

Variety reports that for the first time in thirty years, the Oscars will be moving forward without a host. Instead, whatever A-list actors the Academy can arrange will participate throughout the night in "a broadcast that will focus on starry skits and play up a high-profile year for music in film, thanks to likely nominees Lady Gaga, Dolly Parton, and Kendrick Lamar, one individual involved with the show said."

The last time the Oscars went without a host was in 1989, when the ceremony began with the infamous "Rob Lowe dancing with Snow White" disaster. I'd heard about this moment several times over the years but never sat down to watch it until now, and I almost literally couldn't believe my eyes (and ears) when I finally did:

That was the opening of the show!

I just learned that in the aftermath of that ceremony, 17 Hollywood mainstays including Julie Andrews, Paul Newman, and Billy Wilder wrote an open letter to the producer of the awards calling it an "embarrassment to...the entire motion picture industry." You can see that embarrassment on the faces of nearly every celebrity who appears in the crowd in that video. They're practically pulling at their collars.

Here's hoping things go smoother this year. Without a single host as an anchor, it's easy to imagine a scenario in which the ceremony feels lost and unhinged. But on the bright side, it should give viewers the opportunity to see a little bit of everyone, spreading the attention around instead of getting bogged down in a tiresome monologue. Could this end up being the spark the show needs to regain its ever-dissipating audience? Probably not! It's 2019, and the Academy needs to get it through their heads that in our society of fractured entertainment options, the Oscars are never going to recapture the ratings they once had. I'll be watching regardless, because unlike the Golden Globes (which are a joke voted on by only 90 international journalists), at least the Oscars paints a better picture of what the actual people working in Hollywood think about the year in movies.

The 91st Academy Awards will be broadcast live on February 24, 2019 from the Dolby Theater in Hollywood.