The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences will stream backstage content before, during and after the 2016 Oscars through Facebook Live as reported by Variety.
The Academy’s Facebook page will live stream unfiltered content from the red carpet and back stage. The 2.1m followers of the page will be notified when the stream goes live allowing them to tune in, this evening.
Content will be streamed via a smartphone. The live streams are expected to include a red carpet feed, from the side of the stage during acceptance speeches and video from the press interview room backstage.
The Academy hopes to add a new angle to the event. “By using Facebook Live, we’re going to show fans a fun new angle on this incredible event” Josh Spector, the Academy’s managing director of digital media and marketing tells Variety.
Facebook first introduced Facebook Live in August last year, when it was only available for select public figures through their Facebook Mentions app.
Facebook opened up Live to the Facebook platform to a small percentage of people in the US on iPhones in December last year. Shortly after in January this year they opened up Facebook Live to everyone in the US via iPhone. This is now available in 30 countries.
Last week Facebook announced they are bringing Facebook Live to Android devices. This is only available in the US at the moment with more countries to follow.
Users are watching live videos for longer on Facebook than those which are not live. “In fact, we’ve seen that on average people watch a live video more than three times longer when it is live compared to when it is not live” writes Vadim Lavrusik, Product Manager and Dave Capra, Engineering Manager.
