“I think our future is as much with international cinema as much as with American cinema,” Kramer said, as reported by Tartaglione, during a discussion of the “Values of Cinema in a Global Society” at theTwenty-five percent of the Academy’s membership now comes from outside the United States. Fully half of the latest group of new members are deemed international .
In 2003, when fellow business reporter James Peltz and I tried to compile an exhaustive survey of the Oscar economy for the, we could not come up with a number for the Academy’s foreign television income. Decoyed by hype that claimed “a billion viewers around the world,” we vaguely guessed that foreign revenue must roughly equal domestic, matching the 50-50 split that was common for movie blockbusters at the time.
Even lately, foreign income seems not to have been a priority. I know of a pre-Kramer Academy job applicant who suggested to executives that increased foreign membership—with resulting changes in Oscar voting patterns—needed somehow to be matched with corresponding increases in viewers and revenue from abroad. The candidate wasn’t hired.