Lost amid last night’s Academy Awards "Best Picture" announcement debacle were Oscars wins for cable and online streaming services.
ESPN took home its first Oscar in the best documentary category with its documentary series O.J. Simpson: Made In America. The five-part, eight-hour series -- which was screened at festivals and in New York and Los Angeles to qualify for the Oscar -- beat out a field that included Netflix’s criminal justice-themed documentary 13th.
"I am so proud that 'Academy Award-winning' is now the latest accolade for ESPN Films," said ESPN president John Skipper in a statement. "The breadth of the O.J. Simpson story captured by this film is astounding, and even those who thought they were familiar with this saga learned something new."
The Oscars win was the second big film award for O.J. Simpson: Made In America over the weekend. The documentary also won an Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature on Saturday night.
Streaming services also took home Oscars during last night’s ceremony. Netflix’s The White Helmets won the Academy Award in the Short Documentary category. Also Amazon Studios, which produces series and documentary programming for the Amazon Prime OTT service, won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for its feature film Manchester By The Sea as well as a Best Actor Oscar for the film’s star Casey Affleck. Amaono also won a "Best Foreign Language Film" Academy Award for Iranian drama The Salesman.
