The Academy took a while to warm up to the television screen. For years after the beginning of the Oscars award ceremony, they were covered by newspapers only. At first they released the names of the winners overnight to newspapers, and then – after the Los Angeles Times burned them by releasing the winner’s names the day of the event – in a sealed envelope. If it ever occurred to them the high drama of a secret revealed in real time could play well on the small screen, they never acknowledged it. They invited television coverage only when several of the regular funders of the event bowed out.

On this day, March 19, in 1953 the 25h Academy Awards ceremony was broadcast live, to an audience estimated between 34 to 40 million, by NBC-TV.

NBC reportedly paid $100,000 to the Academy as a one-time “sponsorship fee.” That money was desperately needed to cover the expenses of staging two simultaneous ceremonies in New York and Los Angeles, and to offset the loss of funds from several of the film studios that usually contributed. The following year the Oscars telecast was watched by 43 million viewers, and have been on TV ever since.