I've watched the Oscars every year since high school. Here's why this year may be my last time.

• I used to love watching every best picture nominee ahead of each year's Academy Awards.
• But this year, I'm not as excited for the Oscars.
• As awards shows see their ratings plummet, the Academy needs to reinvent itself.

The Oscars is my favorite night of the year - or at least, it used to be.

For the past five years, I've counted down the days until the Academy Awards, much like football fans anticipate the Super Bowl. Each year, I've watched every best picture nominee in preparation for the big night. Once it arrived, I typically cooked a slew of snacks, invited friends over, and enjoyed what I easily called the most exciting night of the year.

The glitz and the glam was, of course, part of my initial intrigue, but my love for the award show goes beyond that. It's more about the moment you get to see a celebrity, a screenwriter, or a makeup artist hear their name being called and realize their dreams have come true. It's a night of magic, and I eat up every moment of it.

But something has changed. With the Academy Awards this weekend, I'm not as excited about it as I have been in previous years for a multitude of reasons. In fact, this year may be my last Oscars viewing.

Watching every best picture nominee is starting to feel more like a chore

In the past couple of years, watching every best picture nominee has gone from a fun hobby to something more like voluntary torture.

Every year there are movies I dread watching, like the problematic "Green Book" in 2019 or the painfully long "The Irishman" in 2020. But this year, I found it harder than ever to get excited about most of the movies nominated.

For example, in my opinion, "Nomadland," which is the frontrunner for the best picture award, is a film with no plot - it's a sequence of montages, short dialogues, and establishing shots. Of course, the movie is beautifully filmed, but that isn't the only thing an average audience member like myself is looking for.

"Mank," "The Trial of the Chicago 7," and "The Father" are also nominated, and I had to force myself to finish each of them. They all represent the typical Oscars fare: mostly white casts, actionless plots, and artsy camera work.

It seems to me that, year after year, the Academy is nominating movies that only film buffs and industry people can appreciate - not the average American who just wants to see a good movie.

In 2009, the Academy tried to address this. It nominated 10 movies for best picture instead of the usual five, in hopes of allowing large blockbusters that audiences love into the pack. In 2017, Variety found this was only partly successful.

In recent years, for example, movies like "Birdman" in 2014, "Spotlight" in 2015, "Call Me By Your Name" in 2017, and "The Favorite" in 2018 were nominated for best picture, while each earned less than $50 million at the US box office. This suggests that, in some cases, the Academy is nominating critical darlings and not the movies large audiences love.

In 2018, it was announced the Academy would introduce a new category called "Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film," which would honor films that performed well at the box office. It was then postponed indefinitely to "examine and seek additional input regarding the new category," according to The Hollywood Reporter.

I'm not saying every blockbuster movie is worthy of a nomination just because it's popular among audiences. But there's something to be said for hits like "Avengers: Endgame" - which raked in $858 million domestically - that connect with audiences across all demographics, while still being highly rated by critics.

The Academy's brief flirtation with the popular film category suggests mainstream moviegoers - and the ratings they might bring to the Oscars - do matter to them. We just haven't seen any follow-through, and ultimately, I'm left feeling like the awards ceremony isn't for viewers like me.

In 2015, #OscarsSoWhite showed why the Academy keeps nominating the same kinds of movies

For the 87th Academy Awards in 2015, all 20 nominees in the acting categories were white. The list of nominations was met with immediate backlash, and the #OscarsSoWhite movement began.

In the aftermath, it was revealed the Academy was made up almost entirely of white men, suggesting why the same types of movies are nominated each year. When this came to light, I almost didn't watch the awards that year, but with the Academy promising changes, I held out hope.

The Academy set inclusion goals, which tripled the number of voters who were of color and doubled the number of women in hopes of diversifying the Academy and its nominations. Despite the changes, the Academy is still largely white and male. According to The New York Times, 81% of Oscar voters are still white and 67% are male.

Six years after #OscarsSoWhite, the Academy still has work to do

This year, the Academy did make significant progress: nine actors of color were nominated, and, for the first time, two women were nominated for best director. According to an Insider study, there are more people of color nominated in the writer, producer, and director categories than ever before, with 22 overall nominations.

Plus, Viola Davis is nominated for best actress this year for her role in "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," making her the most nominated Black actress in the Academy's history. While Davis said she is happy to hold the record, she pointed out problems within the movie industry that, in turn, persist at the Oscars.

"If me going back to the Oscars four times in 2021 makes me the most nominated Black actress in history, that's a testament to the sheer lack of material there has been out there for artists of color," Davis told Variety.

Despite the significant changes this year, the majority of best picture nominees feature white people stories with mostly white casts. The Academy also did not choose to honor "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," "Da 5 Bloods," and "One Night in Miami" - all of which have all Black casts - in the best picture category.

Outside of race, Insider found that 71% of the past 679 nominations went to men, and those men are three times more likely to win than women at the Academy Awards.

Although the #OscarsSoWhite movement was six years ago, the Academy has a long way to go to get rid of its outdated values, and that has never been more apparent after the social unrest in 2020.

As ratings for awards shows plummet, I'm not alone in leaving them behind

Ratings for award shows have been dropping. Looking at the Oscars ratings alone shows a very telling story.

In 2018, there were 26.5 million viewers, the lowest in Oscars history at the time, according to Indie Wire. The following year, there was an uptick to 29.6 million after the ceremony went host-less. Last year, the ratings broke 2018's record by becoming the lowest-rated Oscars in history with just 23.6 million total viewers.

Although the decreasing viewership has been the trend for several years, 2021 may be the worst yet. Looking at the award shows that already aired this year, the Golden Globes had a 13-year low, and the Emmy Awards had its worst ratings in history. Some say the pandemic is the needle that broke the camel's back after years of dwindling ratings.

"Ratings for the awards have been trending downward due to a host of factors, but the off-a-cliff decline for the Golden Globes has only fed the sense that the appetite for such events has been greatly diminished by a year that shut movie theaters and blunted the celebratory aspects of live events," Brian Lowry at CNN wrote.

He also said he wouldn't be surprised to see the Oscars ratings drop to 10 million viewers this year after the pandemic shifted focus from live events to on-demand streaming.

To get audiences back, the Academy has to take significant steps before next year's Oscars, while doubling down on the diversity efforts we saw this year. They need to continue welcoming people of different backgrounds and ethnicities into the fold, perhaps at a quicker pace by adjusting restrictions. In doing so, I hope this newly diverse Academy will nominate more diverse films, and hopefully ones that connect with larger audiences.

If the Academy doesn't take further steps by next year, this may be the last year I'll be watching.