The Oscars made history Sunday night. But not the good kind.

The three-hour-plus ABC telecast averaged 32 million viewers, the smallest crowd on record—ever, per Nielsen Media Research estimates.

The show “topped” the 2003 ceremony, which, with 33 million viewers, was Oscar’s previous low.

Even worse, if possible, the show was a shadow of its 2007 self, shedding more than 8 million viewers, or one-fifth of its audience, from last year to this. Even in an age where everything is the lowest rated something ever, that’s a significant blood loss.

Oscar’s main trouble seemed to be female trouble: Based on ratings of the show’s prime-time hours, it struck out with the chicks.

Last year, with host Ellen DeGeneres at the helm, the Oscars was up across the board with women viewers.

This year, with male Jon Stewart dealing, the show looked to be down, a lot, in all the major female demographics.

The show’s disconnect with its target audience might have stemmed not so much from Stewart, who generally won good reviews, but from the top nominees, a pack of films with nary a female touch, led by Best Picture winner No Country for Old Men, that Stewart himself jokingly described as “psychopathic killer movies.”

Another ratings challenge cropped up when Hollywood’s biggest night turned into another continent’s crowning glory.

For the first time since the 1965 Oscar ceremony, all four acting awards went to residents of Europe. Perhaps not surprisingly, the ‘65 show, honoring the international likes of Zorba the Greek, suffered the ceremony’s third smallest audience share of the 1960s.

For whatever reason, this year’s Oscars repelled viewers as it went on. What began as a show that averaged 32.3 million viewers in its first half-hour, devolved into a show that averaged 25.4 million in its final half-hour of prime time.

Stewart, who previously presided over the 2006 Oscars, now goes down as the host of two of the three lowest rated Academy Awards in TV history. And in defense of Steve Martin, who hosted the 2003 misfire, that ceremony competed for attention with the start of the Iraq War. Stewart, thusly, stands alone as the lowest-rated host of relatively peaceful Oscar nights.

ABC did its best to turn its frown upside down, noting that Sunday’s telecast was far bigger than the rest of this year’s crop of low-rated award shows, including NBC’s Golden Globes debacle.

The network said the show rated highest in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, West Palm Beach, Florida, and Oscar’s hometown of Los Angeles.

Stewart’s notices were another bright spot. From Britain (the BBC called him “sparkling”) to Los Angeles (the L.A. Times found the comic “cool and loose”), and back to Missouri (”Second time’s the charm for Stewart,” headlined the Kansas City Star), Stewart won over critics.

Unlike the show.

The telecast, both a celebration of the ceremony’s 80th anniversary and, as the Hollywood Reporter pointed out, a reminder that Stewart’s writing staff was only recently back from the picket lines, was dinged for being clip-heavy.

“This wasn’t an Oscars,” wrote Deadline Hollywood’s Nikki Finke. “This was a slightly longer version of the Golden Globes announcement.”

The Washington Post’s Tom Shales said the show went “clip-clip-clipping along.” “This is not a good thing,” he decided.

Shales chided the telecast for waiting to get to the acting categories, and for waiting to present presenter Miley Cyrus until the unfriendly kid hour of nearly 10 p.m. ET.

Riffing on Oscar’s birthday, Time’s Richard Corliss said the ceremony “had the tone and pace suitable to an octogenarian’s temper.”

They each won three gold spray-painted trophies worth $4.89 (£2.48).

Murphy won three of the four worst acting categories for his comedy Norbit, which was mauled by critics.

Lohan won two worst actress Razzies for I Know Who Killed Me. The film broke records by winning eight of its nine nominations, including worst film.

This shattered a record for seven Razzie wins, previously held by Showgirls and Battlefield Earth.

Lohan also won worst screen couple for a scene in which she appears opposite herself.

In I Know Who Killed Me, she plays a small-town girl abducted by a psychopath, and an alter-ego stripper who is missing body parts. It was a major box office flop, with takings of $9m (£4.5m) worldwide.

We can now add German supermodel Heidi Klum to the ever-growing list of celebrities willing to take troubled pop icon Britney Spears under their protective wing.

Victoria’s Secret star Heidi Klum recently granted an interview to German broadcaster ARD and made candid comments about Britney Spears’ current plight and how she would help the beleaguered pop star.

“She can call me and come live in our house with us for a couple of months. I would help set her straight,” the 34-year-old supermodel, a mother of three, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying of the 26-year-old singer, a mother of two.

Heidi Klum, the host of Bravo’s “Project Runway,” is married to singer Seal and lives in Beverly Hills, California. The sky must look clearer on her side of town, as she confessed in the same interview, which is set to air Monday in her native country:

“I have never been as happy as I am today. I have found the man of my life and we have three great kids. They are all so different and fantastic that it really can’t get better than this.”

Heidi’s happiness does not blind her of other people’s distress though, as she told ARD: “I am sorry when a young person gets thrown so off track,” referring to Britney. “She has, of course, lived an extremely wild life.”

Britney’s “extremely wild life” seems to have cooled off lately, the most recent positive example of this being her dinner Sunday evening with dad Jamie Spears, currently co-conservator of her estate.

Britney was photographed going to a Los Angeles restaurant and looking more composed and graceful than she has in months, wearing a long chocolate brown dress and open-toed heels.

Spears senior was named co-conservator of Britney’s estate, along with attorney Andrew Wallet, at the beginning of the month, when Brit Brit was hospitalized for a second time this year.

Court documents released last week reveal that older brother Bryan Spears and a lawyer have been named co-trustees of the trust where the pop singer keeps most of her estimated $100 million fortune.

While Britney is being taken care off by her family, who have been careful to “prune” her entourage, for example firing a manager whom they accused of disrespecting court orders and seeking a restraining order against the dubious Sam Lutfi, other celebrities have expressed a desire to take care of Britney.

Take for example Julia Roberts, also a happy mother of three, who last November told Vanity Fair in an interview for its December issue that she yearns to take Britney in her house and take care of her.

“I see and hear what’s happening to Britney Spears and it’s all I can do not to move her into my guesthouse and say, ‘Okay, this is how it’s going to be!’ And just take care of her,” the actress said at the time.

When “Step Up” unexpectedly made $65 million two years ago, the producers quickly decided that there was more to say about freestyle hip-hop and the kids who live to dance it. A sequel arrived for Valentine’s Day with the unwieldy title “Step Up 2 the Streets.” If it performs as well, watch for “Step Up 3: the Sprained Ankle.”

“Streets” follows the formula of the original - boy and girl from different sides of the tracks meet over a shared passion - but is a step up because of exuberantly choreographed dance numbers. It stars Briana Evigan and Robert Hoffman as the couple, Andie and Chase. The setting is the streets of Baltimore. Hot on the heels of “Hairspray,” the city appears to be a miles-long dance floor.

A teenage gang that goes by the name the 410 receives a text message the night before one of their underground gyrating get-togethers. They drop everything to show off moves such as wild hand gesticulations and somersaults that leave performers bouncing along on the tops of their heads.

The 410s have Saturday night fever night and day. Their hunger to dance seems to have lowered their libido. As in the first “Step Up,” physical contact is restricted to whatever body parts touch during a street event and a couple of mild kisses at the end. It’s all so chaste, they could be in a Jane Austen movie.

Ty (Channing Tatum), the main character from the first movie, is brought back at the beginning to tie the stories together - although it’s doubtful that many in the audience will remember him. He’s the neighborhood guardian for Andie, who has lost her way since losing her mother and is about to be shipped to Texas to live with an aunt. Ty talks her into auditioning for a performing arts school owned by Chase’s hoity-toity family.

 VISIT Disney’s California Adventure — a 55-acre theme park next door to the fabled progenitor of the modern amusement Mecca, Disneyland — and you will find a noisy reminder of what happens when a company loses its focus and cuts corners.The Walt Disney Company built the park on the cheap in 2001, and many rides are copies of familiar carnival workhorses like the Ferris wheel. A lack of landscaping can leave guests sweltering. Outdoor shows were borrowed from other Disney properties. And the theme, built around tributes to California, is modest except for an occasionally unintentional ghost-town atmosphere: The park draws about 6 million visitors a year, a trickle compared with the 15 million who swarm Disneyland.Now, Disney is embarking on a $1.1 billion, five-year effort to get California Adventure on track. The blueprints call for ripping out ho-hum rides and adding elaborate new ones, rebuilding the park’s entrance — a hodgepodge of turnstiles, a miniature Golden Gate Bridge and pastel tile murals — to shift the focus to Disney iconography.In June, Disney will unveil a glimpse of the shoot-for-the-moon bet it is making on California Adventure’s makeover, with the introduction of a ride called Toy Story Mania. More than three years in the making, and estimated to cost about $80 million, the attraction essentially puts guests inside a video game.Riders, wearing 3-D glasses, board vehicles that career through an old-fashioned carnival midway, operated by characters from the popular “Toy Story” film franchise. Vehicles stop at game booths — 56 giant screens programmed with 3-D animation from Pixar — and riders play virtual-reality versions of classic carnival games.But much more is riding on the attraction than a complex turnaround of just one theme park. Toy Story Mania, which Disney is also installing in Florida, reflects the larger pressures and challenges facing the company’s $10.6 billion parks and resorts business. To stay relevant to younger, digitally savvy visitors while also delivering growth to investors, Disney, the company that invented the modern theme park, knows that it has to devise a new era of spectacular attractions rooted in technology.One-upmanship increasingly drives this intensely competitive business, and Disney’s rivals are also trying harder to gain market share. Universal Studios, part of NBC Universal, has more than quadrupled its spending on new rides, introducing attractions in California and Florida that are based on “The Simpsons.” Universal is teaming up with Warner Brothers to bring a small Harry Potter-theme park to Florida in late 2009. Niche players like SeaWorld and Legoland are also muscling in on Disney’s territory.At its core, however, Toy Story Mania represents an effort to solve a puzzle that poses a much larger threat to Disney and the broader amusement park business. The quickening pace of daily living, advances in personal technology and the rapidly changing media landscape are combining to reshape what consumers expect out of a theme park, Disney executives say.Toy Story Mania, which carries a modest price tag compared with some other Disney efforts, demonstrates one way that the company is fighting back, said Jay Rasulo, the chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts.“Bigger and more expensive is not necessarily the answer,” Mr. Rasulo said. “You want people leaving thinking, ‘Wow, only Disney could do that.’ ”Consumers’ fixation on instant gratification and personalization has been reshaping the entertainment industry for some time, but it has finally caught up to the theme park business in visible ways. For instance, Disney has spent much more effort — and money — developing ways to entertain people as they stand in line for Toy Story Mania.An animatronic figure with an estimated $1 million price tag will sing songs and interact with guests as they wait. Employees dressed as “Toy Story” characters will stroll among the crowds.“There’s an erosion of patience,” said Bruce Vaughn, the chief creative executive for Walt Disney Imagineering, the company’s development group. “People’s tolerance for lines is decreasing at a rapid rate.”Mr. Rasulo said that younger visitors, in particular, expect customized entertainment. So Toy Story Mania’s computers will accommodate riders of various skill levels.“Guests are pretty much no longer interested in being passive viewers,” Mr. Rasulo said.