The 94th Academy Awards will air Sunday. Last year’s broadcast drew the smallest audience on record: 9.85 million viewers, down 58% from 23.6 million for the 2020 show, which ran before the pandemic took hold in the U.S. By comparison, almost every Super Bowl in the past decade has drawn more than 100 million TV viewers.

Not only the Oscars have the long-in-the-tooth whiff of best-dressed lists and landlines. All the entertainment awards shows that have run on television—the Grammys, the Golden Globes, the Emmys—have worn out their welcome. It’s a rare blind spot for industries that prize youth and are ever on the prowl for the next big thing. These ceremonies cast a financial halo that can shine on even those tangentially involved, such as the aesthetician tending a nominee’s cuticles or eyebrows for the red carpet. Perhaps that is why the shows lumber along zombielike, even as streaming has transformed movies, music and all entertainment.

Would people set aside an evening to watch doctors or plumbers honor their own? True, the entertainment business has an outsize share of good looks and glitz. But audiences today seem to prefer their stars not in red-carpet regalia but in character, slaying villains, slogging through battlefield trenches, falling in love, or rocketing to outer space.