31 Days Of Oscar

Objective

Turner Classic Movies created a month-long celebration of Oscar cinema to drive engagement during February sweeps and encourage viewers to explore TCM's extensive film catalog. The campaign positioned Oscar-winning films as premium content and incentivized ongoing interaction with TCM's programming schedule and archives through daily engagement mechanics.

Solution

The interactive website featured daily Oscar trivia questions that users could answer to access deeper content from TCM's archives. Users could browse the full programming schedule, access in-depth articles about each film, view classic photographs, and watch video footage organized through a collage-style interface styled as a cinema light-table. The platform was built on a custom CMS developed in CakePHP that integrated directly with TCM's existing API, allowing the site to pull articles, archives, awards data, and video content from TCM's comprehensive movie database. The site launched on February 1, 2011. The campaign has continued as an annual TCM tradition, with each year's programming curated into themed nights (e.g. "Timeless Best Picture Winners," "Musicals That Defined the Form") spanning nearly a century of cinema and culminating on Oscars Sunday with a day of movies about movies.

Results

31 Days of Oscar continues as an annual TCM tradition well beyond its 2011 launch, still airing as the network's flagship event in 2026 (February 13–March 15). In its 2026 edition, the March 1–15 portion alone aired 178 films, accounting for 601 Oscar nominations and 166 wins, including 11 Best Picture winners.