Once again, Cameron draws a crowd to Oscar telecast

"Avatar" was not a big winner at the Oscars -- but it was a big winner for the Oscars.

Thanks to interest in James Cameron's sci-fi flick -- now the top-grossing worldwide release of all time -- a lot more people watched ABC's Sunday night broadcast of the 82nd annual Academy Awards than might have otherwise.

An average of 41.3 million people -- 5 million more than last year -- tuned in. Many perhaps had hoped to see "Avatar" take home the top Oscar. But on the bright side, they were witness to "The Hurt Locker" winning Best Picture -- the lowest-grossing film to be named Best Picture in modern history.

The trophy show's biggest audience in five years also saw "Hurt Locker" director Kathryn Bigelow become the first woman ever to win the Best Director Oscar, and Geoffrey Fletcher ("Precious") become the first African American ever to win a screenplay Oscar.

And viewers saw director Roger Ross Williams ("Music by Prudence") become the first-ever Oscar recipient to be Kanye'd (by producer Elinor Burkett), and costume designer Sandy Powell ("The Young Victoria") delivering The Most Ungracious Acceptance Speech in Oscar history. It was the speech that started with "Well, I already have two of these."

This year's co-hosts, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, may try to take some of the credit for having attracted so many people to such a historic broadcast. But don't you buy that horseradish. They're just the latest to discover how terrific it is to be asked to host the trophy show the year a Cameron flick is in the running -- even when it gets snubbed.

Don't forget, Martin also hosted the 2003 Academy Awards, which for several years held the record as the least-watched Oscars, with its puny crowd of 33.04 million.

Of course, "Chicago" was favored to win Best Picture that year and "Chicago" is a musical, which is like Kryptonite for a large swath of the American public. But, anyway, Martin got to pass on that dubious distinction to Jon Stewart in 2008. That's the year the "Daily Show" star hosted the Oscars show only to have it score an even smaller audience of 32 million. The academy named "No Country for Old Men" its Best Picture that year. The 2008 Academy Award ceremony still holds the record for Oscar's smallest audience since at least 1974 and maybe forever. (Nielsen does not have "viewer" levels for the Academy Awards going back earlier than '74.)

Billy Crystal's the lucky guy who hosted in 1998 -- the year Cameron's other box-office blockbuster, "Titanic," was much-nominated at the Oscars, and was named that year's Best Picture. More than 55 million watched that year, which is Oscar's biggest audience ever, but you don't see anybody crediting Crystal for that crowd.

The Motion Picture Academy will argue that it boosted the ratings Sunday by increasing the number of Best Picture nominees from five to 10 this year. It's true the academy's rule change guaranteed Cameron's presence in the Best Picture race this year, as well as that of other commercial flicks, including "The Blind Side," "Up" and "District 9."

The academy did so to make sure this year was not a repeat of last year, when box-office biggie "The Dark Knight" stood no chance of winning The Big One -- because the academy had failed to nominate the Batman flick for Best Picture.