Of course, part of the reason for the stagnant ticket sales (aside from the sharply escalating price of tickets) involves countless new entertainment alternatives – video games, DVD’s, home theatre systems, the internet, and so forth. Regardless of the cause, however, the effect remains undeniable: motion pictures no longer appeal to everyone, and a full third of the country fails to go to the local multiplex even once in the course of a year.

In this context, the Oscar show can’t possibly wield the impact it once did, and the proliferation of alternative televised award shows (many catering to the public’s alternate interests) further shrinks the Academy Award audience. This year, gluttons for punishment can view, to name just a few possibilities, “The People’s Choice Awards,” “The American Music Awards,” “The Country Music Awards,” “The Grammy Awards,” “The Emmy Awards,” “The MTV Awards” “The Golden Globes,” “The Tony Awards,” “The Independent Spirit Awards,” “The Screen Actors Guild Awards” “The NAACP Image Awards” and, if you’re really desperate, even “The Critics Choice Awards” (sponsored by the Broadcast Film Critics of America, a group of which I’m a voting member).

By the time the Oscars finally roll around, we’ve all experienced award fatigue; it’s hardly surprising that the old air of electric anticipation has become difficult to recapture.

Many conservatives will look at ailing Oscar with ill-disguised glee: anything that indicates tough times for liberal Hollyweird seems worthy of celebration.

There are reasons, however, that the eclipse of the Academy Awards, however tacky and decadent they may seem, represents an unwelcome development for those who believe in the importance of a unified pop culture rather than the current craze for a gorgeous, multicultural mosaic of diversity. It’s worth noting that the nation felt much less fragmented fifty years ago than it does today in part because the public chose from far fewer entertainment alternatives. If you wanted to watch the tube, you viewed one of three networks – without a hundred cable options plus DVD’s to fit your fancy. If you liked movies, you chose each week from the big releases from the eight big Hollywood studios, with few odd-ball “indie” options, or the thousands of titles you can consider at Blockbuster. Even big-time sports provided fewer options, with baseball the dominant national pastime and virtually everyone choosing to support one of the sixteen well-established teams in the American and National Leagues.

Of course, this situation offered far less choice than we enjoy today, and far less capacity to indulge eccentric individualism. Nevertheless, it provided a largely unified frame of reference in school, at work, in the neighborhood. Nearly everyone saw “I Love Lucy” or “Father Knows Best,” so everyone could talk about it. When “Around the World in Eighty Days” won Best Picture in 1956 (beating out DeMille’s Biblical epic, “The Ten Commandments”) tens of millions could discuss the upset because so many people had seen both films – even among the young kids in elementary school at the time.

The Oscar ceremony once provided a unifying moment of secular solemnity that helped bring the nation together. It didn’t matter if you were young or old, rich or poor, high school drop out or college grad, immigrant or native born, loony lefty or crazy conservative, it still felt enjoyable and important to tune in to Hollywood’s big show. Optimistically, Academy Award promoters still like to compare their glittering night to the Superbowl as the two yearly occasions that command truly national attention.

In truth, there’s no longer much comparison: the most recent Superbowl set ratings records with 97.5 million viewers. The most recent Oscar show (a year before the feeble and star-crossed offering scheduled for this Sunday night) captured only 39.9 million.

Looking forward to that event, it’s true that there’s no real reason to care whether the Academy voters give their top prize to a dark, violent, nihilistic movie like “No Country for Old Men,” or else choose to reward a dark, violent nihilistic movie like “There Will Be Blood.” Nor should we invest too much emotional energy or prayer in the possibility that a gentler, more life-affirming film like “Juno” could slip through in an upset.

It does matter, however, that a time-honored, slightly nostalgic and tradition-bound occasion that once helped to define our common culture as Americans now looks less relevant and less significant than ever before.