ACADEMY AWARDS 2006 BROADCAST DATE ANNOUNCED

Event to Air One Week Later to Avoid Conflict with Winter Olympics Closing Ceremonies

The 78th Academy Awards will air on SUNDAY, MARCH 5, 2006, it was announced today. The show will fall a week later in the calendar than in 2004 and 2005.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Frank Pierson described the step back into March as a one-year expedient to avoid a conflict with the closing ceremonies of the 2006 Winter Olympics, which are scheduled to fall on the Academy's "natural" date of Sunday, February 26. "It didn't seem fair to make viewers have to choose between these two special events," Pierson said.

At the same time, he emphasized that the Academy is very pleased with what had originally been characterized as a two-year experiment in moving the Awards presentations up almost a month earlier than in the past. He said that late-February broadcasts of the Oscars would resume in 2007.

The 2006 and 2007 broadcasts, as well as 2005's 77th Awards on Sunday, February 27, will be carried -- as they have for the most recent thirty years -- live by ABC.