International
The Oscars to stream live on Watch ABC
MUMBAI: For the first time ever, the Oscars preshow and full awards telecast will stream live for verified Watch ABC viewers online and on mobile devices. The Watch ABC app allows viewers with participating TV subscription services access to 24/7 live viewing of the network, as well as next day on demand access to most series, making it possible for fans to watch the entire the Oscars experience – including Jimmy Kimmel Live: After the Oscars – in more places and at more times than ever before.
Live streaming is currently available through Comcast, Cablevision, Cox Communications, Charter Communications, Midcontinent Communications, Verizon FiOS, Google Fiber and AT&T U-verse in ABC’s eight Owned Station markets – New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, Raleigh-Durham and Fresno. Once aired, the full Oscars telecast and pre-show will be available on demand via WATCH ABC for verified viewers for three days, through Wednesday, March 5. WATCH ABC can be accessed from Oscar.com, ABC.com, and WATCHABC.com or via the WATCH ABC app, which is free on select Android devices and iOS and can be downloaded at Google Play, the Amazon Appstore, and the App Store. Verified viewers then log in using their cable or satellite subscription username and password.
The Academy and Disney/ABC Television Group’s Digital Media team are also unveiling the talent line up for their Emmy Award-winning Oscar second screen experience, The Oscars Backstage, which will also be streamed this year to all viewers – regardless of whether they are verified – via Watch ABC. Hosts and correspondents include:
•Entertainment Reporter and Film Critic Ben Lyons (Yahoo, “Extra!,” ESPN Radio, “E! News,” among others) and fashion retail correspondent and author Hitha Prabhakar (who has contributed to ABC World News, Good Morning America, Nightline, Bravo, CNN, E! Entertainment television, among others) will co-host from the red carpet and backstage.
•PEOPLE’s Managing Editor Peter Castro will once again report from the fan bleachers on the red carpet. The bleachers are sponsored by Time Inc.’s PEOPLE, which invites 700 fans and PEOPLE VIP subscribers to watch and cheer nominees, presenters and film’s biggest stars as part of the PEOPLE Oscar Fan Experience.
•Good Morning America and ESPN contributing editor Chris Connelly is returning as the official greeter of the Oscars Red Carpet, which includes welcoming nominees, presenters and performers to the show.
Presented again this year by Samsung Galaxy, The Oscars Backstage is designed to be the ultimate complement to the live telecast. All Oscar viewers who visit WATCH ABC will be able to select from three channels that will pull from more than 15 live cameras strategically placed on the Red Carpet and throughout the backstage areas of the Dolby Theatre, providing fans with insider views into the most memorable moments of the night. Popular cameras positions include the Thank You cam, Winners Walk, Audience and Press Room. Fans will also be able to access the official Oscar Buzz social feed and popular photo galleries from within the app. The Oscars Backstage experience launched in 2011 to much acclaim and has been recognized with an Emmy for Creative Achievement in Interactive Arts and an Industry Star Mobile Excellence Award. It remains unprecedented in terms of live event second screen access.
“We’re extremely proud of how much the Oscar Digital Experience has evolved,” said Albert Cheng, EVP and Chief Product Officer, Digital Media, Disney/ABC Television Group in a press release. “This year more people than ever before will have access to the backstage streams and verified WATCH ABC viewers will be able to participate in the most interactive Oscars to date, seamlessly navigating between the pre-show, telecast and The Oscars Backstage experience on their mobile devices.”
“We’re excited to once again bring viewers backstage and allow them to experience all of the action on Oscar Sunday – not just what happens on stage, but the stories that play out behind-the-scenes as well”, said Josh Spector, Managing Director of Digital Media and Marketing at Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in a statement.
Additionally, video highlights from the telecast and The Oscars Backstage will be available as embeddable clips on Oscar.com almost immediately after they air at Oscar.com/blogs. Full performances of the shows musical performances, including Pharrell (Happy), Idina Menzel, (Let It Go), Karin O (The Moon Song) and U2 (Ordinary Love) will be featured in a dedicated “Musical Moments” section sponsored by Pepsi that includes in-depth video and photo coverage of past music winners.
The site is also showcasing nominees “in their own words,” a collection of official nominee questionnaires, including Bradley Cooper (American Hustle), Bruce Dern (Nebraska), Michael Fassbender (Shame), June Squibb (Nebraska), Sally Hawkins (Blue Jasmine), among others. To add to the fun, insanely addicting quizzes from past year’s awards shows are featured, including: “Guess Who Won Best Actress”, “Guess the Dress”, “Who Starred In?”, and “Script to Screen”. The hugely popular “My Picks” interactive ballot is also live. Friends can view and share the ballot on Facebook, which will update in real time on Oscar Night, ensuring that the most competitive Oscar handicappers are instantly aware of their ranking among friends.
Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2013 will be presented on Oscar Sunday, March 2, 2014, at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center and televised live on the ABC Television Network. The presentation, produced by Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, also will be televised live in more than 225 countries and territories worldwide.
The 9th annual Jimmy Kimmel Live: After the Oscars airs Sunday, 2 march in the US after the late local news ET/CT and at 10:00 p.m. Pacific Time on ABC. It will also be available live and on demand via the WATCH ABC app. Broadcasting from Disney’s El Capitan Theater located on Hollywood Boulevard in the heart of L.A.’s star-studded Walk of Fame, the studio is just steps away from Dolby Theater, home to the “Academy Awards.” Past guest appearances on Kimmel’s post-Oscar specials have included Tom Cruise, Ben Affleck, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Ellen DeGeneres, Jessica Chastain, Jude Law, Channing Tatum, John Krasinski, Samuel L. Jackson and many more. Additionally, previous comedy bits featured include the epic trailers for Movie: The Movie, which has been viewed over 24 million times on YouTube, the follow-up Movie: The Movie: 2V as well as Toddlers and Tiaras with Tom Hanks and Kimmel pitching show ideas to Oprah. Last year’s Jimmy Kimmel Live: After the Oscars marked the most-watched post-Oscar telecast in the franchise’s history.
LOS ANGELES: Acting has never been an easy profession, but in recent years, it has acquired a new existential anxiety. Artificial intelligence can now mimic faces, clone voices and, in theory at least, speak any language it is fed. The fear that actors may soon be replaced by algorithms no longer belongs exclusively to science fiction. And yet, despite the rise of digital inauthenticity, some performers remain stubbornly resistant to replacement. The reason is not celebrity, nor even talent. It is language.
On paper, this should not be a problem. AI can translate. It can imitate accents. It can string together grammatically correct sentences in dozens of languages. But acting, inconveniently, is not about grammatical correctness. It is about meaning, and meaning is where AI still falters.
Machine translation offers a cautionary tale. Google Translate, now powered by neural AI, has improved markedly since its debut in 2006. It can manage menus, emails and airport signage with impressive efficiency. What it struggles with, however, are the moments that matter most: idioms, metaphors, irony, and cultural shorthand. Ask it to translate a joke, a threat disguised as politeness, or a line heavy with emotional subtext, and it begins to unravel. Acting lives precisely in those gaps.
This matters because film language is rarely literal. Scripts, particularly in independent cinema, rely on figurative speech and symbolism to convey what characters cannot say outright. Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver is a useful example. The film’s recurring use of red operates on multiple levels: grief, desire, repression, liberation, and memory. These meanings are inseparable from the Spanish cultural context and emotional cadence. A translation may convey the words, but not the weight they carry. An AI-generated performance might replicate the sound, but not the sense.
This is where multilingual actors gain their edge. Performers such as Penélope Cruz and Sofía Vergara do not simply switch between languages; they move between cultural logics. Their fluency allows them to inhabit characters without flattening them for international consumption. Language, for them, is not an accessory but a structuring force.
Beyond European cinema, this becomes even more pronounced. Languages such as Hindi, Arabic and Mandarin are spoken by hundreds of millions of people and underpin vast cinematic traditions. As global audiences grow more interconnected, the demand for authenticity increases rather than diminishes. Viewers can tell when a performance has been filtered through approximation. Subtle errors, misplaced emphasis, and an unnatural rhythm break the illusion.
There is also a practical dimension. Multilingualism expands opportunity. Sofía Vergara has spoken openly about how learning English enabled her to work beyond Colombia and access Hollywood roles. But this movement is not a one-way export of talent into English-speaking cinema. Multilingual actors carry stories, styles and sensibilities back with them, enriching multiple industries at once.
Cinema has always thrived on such hybridity. Denzel Washington’s performances, for instance, draw on the cultural realities of growing up African American in the United States, while also reflecting stylistic influences from classic Hollywood and Westerns. His work demonstrates how identity and influence intersect on screen. Multilingual actors extend this intersection further, embodying multiple cultural frameworks simultaneously.
At times, linguistic authenticity is not merely artistic but ethical. Films that confront historical trauma, such as Schindler’s List, rely on language to anchor their moral seriousness. When Jewish actors perform in German, the choice is not incidental. Language becomes a site of memory and confrontation. It is difficult to imagine an automated voice carrying that responsibility without hollowing it out.
This is why claims that AI heralds the death of language miss the point. Language is not just a delivery system for information. It is a repository of history, humour, power and pain. Fluency is not only about knowing what to say, but when to hesitate, when to understate, and when to let silence do the work. These are not technical problems waiting to be solved; they are human instincts shaped by lived experience.
AI may one day improve its grasp of metaphor and nuance. It may even learn to sound convincing. But acting is not about sounding convincing; it is about being convincing. Until algorithms can acquire memory, cultural inheritance and emotional intuition, multilingual actors will remain irreplaceable. AI may learn to speak. But it cannot yet learn to mean.
In an industry increasingly tempted by shortcuts, language remains stubbornly resistant to automation. And for actors who can move between worlds, linguistic, cultural, and emotional, that resistance is not a weakness, but a quiet, enduring advantage.
