The Oscars cannot help but come across as an artifact of a dead civilization — a leftover, like the United Nations General Assembly, of a more confident era.

An estimated 19.7 million viewers watched Sunday night's 97th Academy Awards ceremony, the biggest audience in five years.

The Conan O'Brien-hosted telecast did have the benefit ... A high water mark of 55 million people watched "Titanic" clean up in 1998, and the show didn't have fewer than 30 million viewers until ...