But today, in a media cosmos dominated by the Internet, Twitter and Facebook, staging an event that’s geared toward morning TV is the equivalent of printing out all of your email and sending it by Pony Express.

In today’s pop culture, anything that has any air of anticipation is a potential TV event. look at sports, where everything from the NBA and NFL draft to the announcement of the MLB all-star game selections is packaged and presented as a TV show. Even the Heisman Trophy, given to the best college football player, is presented in prime time on ESPN, where last December’s award pulled in 4.6 million viewers. The NFL draft is such a hot ticket that in 2010, ESPN’s coverage of the draft’s first-round selections actually got higher ratings than two NBA playoff contests, including the Lakers against the Oklahoma City Thunder, put together.

PHOTOS: Oscar nominees react

If a telecast showing NFL prospects strolling up to a podium can outdraw a pair of exciting NBA playoff games, it’s hardly a stretch to imagine that a prime-time TV special built around the Oscar nominations could be transformed into a serious ratings bonanza. ABC, which broadcasts the Academy Awards, would be happy to have a show with some glamour and sizzle that could in turn be used to hype its Oscar telecast. (CBS, which broadcasts the Grammys, now does a prime-time Grammy nomination show.)

Dawn Hudson, the academy’s new chief exective, was supposedly brought in as an agent of change at the slow-moving institution. I’ve heard through the rumor mill that she is pressing ahead with several new initiatives, but since she hasn’t returned any of my phone calls, I don’t know whether a nomination-day TV special is high on her list or not.

So here’s some free advice: do it right away. The best thing about a TV show built around the nominations is that, simply by virtue of being new, it would be liberated from all of the stuffy, confining traditions that have kept the Oscars from undergoing any major renovations. The most obvious benefit? Since they’ve already been excluded from the current five-minute format, a new show wouldn’t have to bore viewers with nominations for any of the arcane technical categories, which are locked into the Academy Awards format, despite the fact that they gum up the works and make for awful television.

Even better, the new show could try all sorts of experiments deemed too radical for the big event, whether it’s doing remote feeds from studio lots, talent agencies and nomination parties or having a camera crew at the homes of some of the leading actors, getting their instant reaction — good, bad or ugly — to the news. Let's face it, the essence of nomination day is what makes great TV — the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. I mean, who wouldn't want to see "The Help's" Viola Davis relishing the moment or "Moneyball's" Jonah Hill getting a congratulatory call from costar Brad Pitt.  A good producer (perhaps ABC could borrow a hotshot from ESPN, its sister company) could also break up the announcement of different categories with a few pre-taped segments. It would be nice to see highlights from various careers that haven’t already been ridiculously overexposed — obvious possibilities from this year’s candidates being Jean Dujardin for leading actor, Alexander Payne for best director or Iran's Asghar Farhadi, who not only landed a foreign-language film nomination for "A Separation" but an original screenplay nod as well. The academy should also embrace the inevitable: Since everyone spends most of his or her awards season attention span engaging in horse-race style speculation, the nomination show should have a pair of Oscar pundits offering instant analysis about the biggest surprises.

It’s a no-brainer that the show should have a fresh face as its host. but more important, it should have a fresh attitude. every other award show on TV, including the Grammys, Golden Globes, ESPYs and MTV Video Awards, has tons more on-screen fun than the Oscars. A show built around the nominations would be an opportunity to remind viewers that the Oscars, despite all its gravitas, knows how to have a good time. The academy can jealously guard its prestige all it wants, but at some point it has to accept the fact that if you’re putting on a TV show in the 21st century, stodginess almost guarantees a swift trip to the scrap heap.

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Photo: Jennifer Lawrence and motion picture academy President Tom Sherak in Beverly Hills announcing the leading actress candidates for the 84th annual Academy Awards. Credit: Matt Sayles/Associated Press.

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