PwC will keep the Oscars
News broke last week that the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences will keep PwC as their official ballot counter.
In case you’ve forgotten, PwC botched the best picture award at the Oscars in February 2017. PwC Partner Brian Cullinan erroneously handed Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty the wrong envelope. He handed them the envelope for best actress instead of the envelope for best picture. Both Beatty and Dunaway have difficulty reading because of their advanced age. They saw La La Land on the winning card and just read it out loud. Instead the movie Moonlight should have won.
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PwC at the Oscars (2017 Edition)
PwC has been performing these duties for 83 years, so any departure from them would have been a huge blow to PwC. PwC already took a huge blow by screwing up the 2017 Oscars anyway.
Statement from the Academy
Cheryl Boone Isaacs who is the President of the Academy stated that pwc made a “presentation of revised protocols and ambitious controls.” She also stated the Academy was “ unsparing in our assessment that the mistake made by representatives of the firm was unacceptable.” There is no doubt that it was unacceptable. Brian Cullinan tweeted out evidence of his incompetence. He was tweeting pictures of Emma Stone while he should have been overseeing the presentation of best picture.
Both him and Martha Ruiz are supposed to memorize the winners of the categories in case something like this were to happen. What they should have done is rush on stage immediately instead of letting the wrong movie accept an award that isn’t theirs. Pricewaterhousecoopers will be getting a second chance but both partners will not. They will have to find another account to keep them busy in the rest of their Januaries and Februaries at PwC.
That doesn’t bode to well for Martha Ruiz and Brian Cullinan’s year end review.
Related:
Who is PwC Partner Brian Cullinan?
PwC Oscar Partners Martha Ruiz and Brian Cullinan Fired
New controls will be put in place
In order for PwC to retain the account, they had to put new controls in place to prevent the same thing from happening again. PwC supposedly had an extensive presentation of these new protocols in front of the Academy. I wonder if Tim Ryan groveling was part of this presentation.
- PwC will not be allowed to have any distracting electronics in the backstage area this year.
- There will be a PwC employee backstage with knowledge of the winners sitting backstage. This person will sit with show producers in case there is any mix up.
- Ballot partners have increased oversight roles by Tim ryan and the return of Rick Rosas. Rick Rosas was co-balloting leader for 12 years.
Conclusion
It will be interesting to see what PwC does in the run up to the Oscars next year. This year they did a whole public relations campaign before the Oscars. They had “briefy” the ballot briefcase travel all around the country and to Mexico before the Oscars.
We wrote on this site that PwC seemed a bit unprofessional and didn’t take the job seriously before they botched the best picture presentation. We will have to wait and see how they treat the importance of their job this year.
Tim Ryan has had a brutal year at the helm of the US arm of PwC. In his time as US chairman, they’ve settled the Taylor Bean lawsuit, MF Global lawsuit and had a huge public mishap at the Oscars. The Taylor Bean and MF Global lawsuits were initially in the billions of dollars of damages. It is unknown what they were settled for. I’m sure when Tim Ryan spoke to the Academy, he was probably ready to pay them from his personal account in order to retain this account. Any further damage to PwC’s reputation, might have left Ryan’s job up in the air. We’ll have to see how Tim Ryan does in his second year at the helm at PwC.
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