PricewaterhouseCoopers Celebrates 75 years "Diamond Anniversary" Counting Oscars® Ballots

The upcoming 81st Annual Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars will be held in Los Angeles on Sunday, February 22, 2009.

And this year marks an important landmark for a Big Four firm.

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP has been counting Oscars® ballots for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for an amazing 75 years. During all these years, the painstaking audit process has remained exactly the same and there has never been a security breach. The audit leaders, Oltmanns and Rosas, lead a group of accountants who work on the project from a top-secret location.

“This year is particularly special for PricewaterhouseCoopers as we celebrate our 75th anniversary counting the Oscars ballots on behalf of the Academy,” said Brad Oltmanns. “PricewaterhouseCoopers’ involvement with the Academy is extremely high-profile and represents an ongoing source of pride for the Firm.”

“Even with the technology advancements of the past 75 years, PricewaterhouseCoopers has never changed its process of hand tabulating the ballots to ensure the highest level of precision, discretion and secrecy,” said Rick Rosas.

This is how it works (from the PwC website)

Nomination ballots were mailed to 5,810 voting members on December 26, 2008, with votes due by January 12, 2009. Nine days later, on January 21, the PricewaterhouseCoopers ballot team delivered nominations results to the Academy in preparation for the announcement on January 22. Final ballots will be mailed today (January 28, 2009); final ballots are due by February 17.

All completed ballots are delivered to PricewaterhouseCoopers. The balloting leaders then manually tabulate the responses according to Academy rules. As a precautionary measure, two complete sets of envelopes bearing recipients’ names are prepared and brought by PricewaterhouseCoopers partners to the ceremony via separate, secret routes. As a second precautionary measure, the PricewaterhouseCoopers balloting leaders also memorize the names of the award winners.

Identities of Oscar recipients are kept confidential until they are announced during the live telecast. During the telecast, Oltmanns and Rosas will remain backstage and hand the envelopes to award presenters immediately before they walk onstage.

And here are some fun facts:
440,000+: The approximate number of ballots counted by PricewaterhouseCoopers in 75 years on the job.
2,500+: The number of winners' envelopes stuffed since the envelope system was introduced in 1941.
1,700: The approximate number of “person-hours” it takes the PricewaterhouseCoopers team every year to count and verify the ballots by hand.
34: The number of broadcasts PricewaterhouseCoopers’ partners have appeared on since 1953 – the year the Oscars were first televised.
24: The number of awards categories to be tabulated for the 81st Academy Awards at a secret location known only to the members of the small PricewaterhouseCoopers ballot team.
7: The number of days it takes to count the ballots for nominations.
3: The number of days it takes to count the final ballots.

This is as glamorous as auditing gets – high-profile client, high levels of anticipation, senior team in a top-secret location, no margin for error, billions of viewers and hobnobbing with Hollywood celebrities. Kudos for PwC for keeping this up!