THE LONG AND SHORT OF STREAMLINED OSCARCAST

It’s finally happened. The Oscars have been ruined.

Those biggies Gregory Peck, Robert Wise, Gene Allen and Larry Gelbart were brought in to produce and streamline an Academy Awards telecast that lasted almost four hours last year. This was the year that the telecast was supposed to be better because it was shorter.

Who says?

Peck crossed everyone by fulfilling his vow to run Monday night’s program on ABC like Captain Bligh. Sure, he made that promise. But no one expected him to keep it.

Tighter speeches. Almost no dopey bantering by the presenters. Good production numbers. Snappier pacing. I knew something was awry when after the first hour . . . I was still awake.

So what if the telecast was shorter and crisper? So what if it was a breezy 3 hours and 10 minutes? So what if most of the acceptance speeches were less than 45 seconds and sounded like Jack Webb in “Dragnet”?

The telecast was so trim and disciplined that there was none of the suspense and spontaneity of live TV. Taste and brevity prevailed. It was almost antiseptic and having an elephant on the set didn’t make any difference.

There was no time for an abrasive political speech, or even a streaker. There was no time for the traditional foolishness that you love to hate. Jack Lemmon was a flop as the primary host because he failed to tell one bad joke.

Sitting in front of my set with a stopwatch and timing all the speeches made me a nervous wreck. All right. The shortest acceptance speech (by producer Mike Hoover for “Up,” the winning live-action short film) was 14 seconds and the longest (by “Amadeus” producer Saul Zaentz) 3 minutes and 58 seconds. So what?

The Oscars are supposed to be long and boring. When they’re not, there’s nothing to gripe about.

There are some institutions that shouldn’t be altered, institutions whose flaws and obnoxious idiosyncrasies become part of their fabric through repetition. If stupid works, why change it?

Dropping the traditional questions asked Miss America candidates (“What would you do if a young man tries to kiss you on a first date?”), for example, was a classic case of interfering with a process whose very banality and corniness became a reason for watching the annual pageant.

Same for the Oscars.

What fun is there in a telecast whose biggest flaw is Kirk Douglas’ crooked bow tie? Oh, sure, presenter emeritus Laurence Olivier omitted reading the nominees for best picture. And I would give Ann Reinking a special award, as the telecast’s best dancer who sang without a voice. But otherwise, everything went smoothly and the music--especially the dazzling “Footloose” production number starring Debbie Allen--was terrific.

The Academy Awards have a distinctly different aura from television’s Emmys. One gives you Cary Grant, the other Gary Coleman.

The Oscarcast rolls out legends “in their own time” like parts on an assembly line. Never have there been so many expressions of unity and love afterward from nominees who had spent weeks furiously campaigning for themselves and against their Oscar opponents.

Someone called after the telecast with an observation about Monday night. “I’ve never seen so many phonies,” he said. “I loved it.”

The evening started poorly for me when our cable TV system blew 20 minutes before the telecast. So I drove to the home of some friends and watched there. What can I say? This Oscarcast review isn’t just mine. It also belongs to Debra Lipson for providing the stopwatch and Louis Lipson for providing the pizza. And, before my 45 seconds expire, I want to thank my wife for staying by our TV set until the cable was repaired.

But no thanks to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for ruining a bad thing.

In the old days, for example, we could always count on some stuffy academy president lumbering forth and laboriously explaining the Oscar voting process. What a tedious drag. That was our cue to throw popcorn at the set.

But on Monday night’s program, they changed even that. The voting was explained during the closing credits. More streamlining.

The Oscar telecast was born to bore. It’s unethical to tamper with failure. It’s unholy. It’s criminal. Now look what’s happened. The Oscar telecast is good.

And I’m really mad about it.

CONCERNING FAILURE: I erroneously wrote in Sunday’s Television Times that James Stewart had not won an Oscar. He received one for best actor in 1940 for “The Philadelphia Story.”