She will make her second appearance as the show's emcee on the March 2 broadcast. 
 
 Ellen DeGeneres will host this year's Oscars. DeGeneres herself announced the news Friday morning on Twitter, writing, "It's official: I'm hosting the ! I'd like to thank , my wife Portia and, oh dear, there goes the orchestra." 
 
 The Academy is getting an early start on next year's Oscar show. In April, it rehired producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron to produce next year's 86th Academy Awards, which will air March 2 on ABC. The decision to bring back the two producers was made by outgoing president Hawk Koch, with the blessing of the board of governors, even though the decision is usually left to the current Academy president. 
 
 PHOTOS: A Day in the Life of Ellen DeGeneres 
 
 DeGeneres' announcement comes immediately after Cheryl Boone Isaacs was elected new president of the Academy on Tuesday. She promptly endorsed the selection of the two producers and said her first order of business was meeting with them to decide on a host. 
 
 Choosing DeGeneres, known for her kindler, gentler humor, signals that the Academy's next awards show will have a decidedly different tone than the 85th Academy Awards, hosted by Seth MacFarlane, who drew criticism for routines like his song about actresses' nudity on film. 
 
 DeGeneres previously hosted the show in 2007 and earned a Primetime Emmy nomination for her work. 
 
 "I am so excited to be hosting the Oscars for the second time. You know what they say -- the third time's the charm," DeGeneres said in a statement. 
 
 COVER STORY: The Booming Business of Ellen DeGeneres ||||| Ellen DeGeneres will host the Oscars. 
 
 The comedian and talk show host made the announcement via her Twitter feed on Friday. 
 
 @TheEllenShow 
 
 Ellen DeGeneres It's official: I'm hosting the #Oscars ! I'd like to thank , my wife Portia and, oh dear, there goes the orchestra. 
 
 DeGeneres has experience hosting the Academy Awards: She previously served as emcee during the 2007 ceremony. 
 
 "I am so excited to be hosting the Oscars for the second time," DeGeneres said in a press release announcing the big news. "You know what they say -- the third time's the charm." 
 
 That DeGeneres was chosen as host should please critics who were unhappy with this year's master of ceremonies, Seth MacFarlane. The "Family Guy" creator was criticized for his opening monologue, which included a parody song called "We Saw Your Boobs" that was directed at actresses who had disrobed onscreen. 
 
 "What I really didn’t like was the song and dance number about seeing actresses boobs," Oscar-winning actress Jane Fonda wrote after the 85th annual Academy Awards this past February. "I agree with someone who said, if they want to stoop to that, why not list all the penises we’ve seen? Better yet, remember that this is a telecast seen around the world watched by families with their children and to many this is neither appropriate or funny." 
 
 Despite the outrage, Oscar telecast producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron thought MacFarlane did a good job as host. "We weren't concerned at that level [of shocking people]," Meron said after the broadcast. "We were concerned with putting on entertainment, which we think we did, and people tuned in great numbers." 
 
 To that end, the 85th annual Academy Awards were watched by 40 million people, an increase of one million from the year before. The show also saw a 20 percent rise in the coveted 18-34 demographic from the 2012 ceremony. 
 
 "We looked at ratings and said, 'Men are not watching, and young men are not watching, and why does that have to be?'" Zadan told The Los Angeles Times in February. 
 
 Zadan and Meron made no mention of ratings in the press release announcing DeGeneres as Oscars host: 
 
 "We are thrilled to have Ellen DeGeneres host the Oscars," the duo said in a statement. "As a longtime friend, we had always hoped to find a project for us to do together and nothing could be more exciting than teaming up to do the Oscars. There are few stars today who have Ellen's gift for comedy, with her great warmth and humanity. She is beloved everywhere and we expect that the audience at the Dolby Theatre, and in homes around the globe, will be as excited by this news as we are." 
 
 The 86th annual Academy Awards will air on ABC on March 2, 2014. Head to the Oscars website for the full press release announcing DeGeneres as host. Watch DeGeneres' monologue from the 2007 Oscars below -- and see a pic of her in action -- below: ||||| For the third time in her career, Ellen DeGeneres was asked to host a Hollywood awards ceremony after a tragedy — this time the tragedy being Seth MacFarlane’s Hollywood-savaging Oscars hosting of a year ago. Ellen hosted the twice-delayed Emmy Awards after the September 2001 terrorist attacks and, four years later, after Hurricane Katrina. Tonight she hosted the first Academy Awards since MacFarlane opened the Oscars with “We Saw Your Boobs” and followed it up with a crack about John Wilkes Booth (rather than nominee Daniel Day-Lewis) being the actor who best got into President Lincoln’s head. 
 
 “For those of you watching us around the world, it’s been a tough couple of days for us. It has been raining. We’re fine – thank you for your prayers,” DeGeneres joked as she opened tonight’s ABC broadcast — a nod to her deft hosting of the aforementioned Emmy broadcasts, including that twice-postponed ’01 Emmys, which she’d opened with the observation: “What would bother the Taliban more than seeing a gay woman in a suit surrounded by Jews” to gales of laughter. 
 
 Related: OSCARS: Deadline’s Live Blog 
 
 When tonight’s disjointed show finally ended, a minute or two into Monday morning for about a third of the country’s TV viewers who live on the East Coast, DeGeneres had reminded us she’s likeable as all get out, but her improvised bits did not work so well – Amy Poehler and Tina Fey did it much better at the Golden Globes. She’d called Liza Minnelli “sir”, complimented “him” on his great Liza Minnelli impersonation; shamed Harvey Weinstein into putting $200 bucks into Pharrell’s hat, which she was passing around to collect money to pay for the product-placement pizza she ordered for the A-listers in the front rows; pocketed and used best supporting actress winner Lupita Nyong’o’s pizza-collection contribution (a lip gloss); and maybe crashed Twitter shortly after piling about a dozen celebrities into one selfie during the broadcast in an attempt to break the record for most re-tweets (it was pushing 2 million by the time the trophy show was over, causing the Motion Picture Academy to apologize for contributing to the Twitter traffic jam). 
 
 Heroes in Hollywood was this year’s theme. “We need heroes now more than ever,” DeGeneres said during the broadcast. “People in the world are going through hard times, and movies offer us an escape. Movies inspires us. I’m not saying that movies are the most important thing in the world ’cause we all know the most important thing in the world is youth,” she snarked, in the first of her costume changes — in a sort of barrister suit minus the wig, which inspired MSNBC show host Ronan Farrow to tweet: “Tomorrow on Ronan Farrow Daily: exclusive interview with Ellen DeGeneres’s cravat.” 
 
 Deadline followers on various social-media sites had wildly different opinions about the show. “Death” said one succinct criticism; others cut DeGeneres some slack because they like her a lot; one Twitter user was “completely unimpressed” and asked if Ricky Gervais was available for next year. 
 
 As with the Golden Globes, some awards did not get handed out at the Oscars tonight, but let’s remedy that right now: 
 
 * Best Guerrilla Upstaging Of A Multimillion-Dollar Product Placement Campaign By Oscar Sponsor Samsung (touting its new Galaxy S5): Lupita’s lip balm which, which, according to Twitter chatter, is Clarins. 
 
 * Best Brain Freeze: John Travolta introducing Frozen’s “Let It Go” singer and Broadway’s Wicked star Idina Menzel as “the Wickedly talented Adela Dazeem.” Within minutes a Twitter account had been created for Adela Dazeem which as of posting had 11,000 followers and counting, and was trending. 
 
 * Best Acceptance Speech Demonstrating Why Actors Need Directors: Matthew McConaughey’s shout-out to God and himself-in-10-years during his acceptance speech for the Best Actor win. 
 
 * Most Revelatory Moment About Celebrity Psychology That We Knew All Along But It’s Nice To Have It Confirmed: Kevin Spacey photobombing Ellen’s selfie with Meryl Streep and other invited A-listers. “My photobombing gets better and better,” Spacey bragged on Twitter. (Spacey seemed like a drunk high schooler crashing a wedding at the Oscars; he got more screen time than any of the night’s nominees, and then showed up on Jimmy Kimmel’s post-Oscar show and took another selfie of himself and Kimmel to see if he could beat Ellen’s re-tweet tally). 
 
 * Best Spontaneous Expression Of Joy That Starts Well And Ends Badly: 20 Feet From Stardom cast member Darlene Love bursting out into song that goes on just long enough off key to demonstrate why she’s a backup singer not a headliner. 
 
 * Best Thank You That Comes Off As Note To HR Personnel File: The Great Gatsby costumer Catherine Martin thanking Ian Gracie, supervision art director, with, “you rock and you swear a lot.”
– Seth MacFarlane won't be back at the Oscars next year for an encore: Instead, Ellen DeGeneres is returning as host for a second time, reports the Huffington Post. DeGeneres herself confirmed via jokey tweet: "It's official: I'm hosting the #Oscars! I'd like to thank @TheAcademy, my wife Portia and, oh dear, there goes the orchestra." DeGeneres hosted previously in 2007 and earned an Emmy nod in the process, notes the Academy's news release via the Hollywood Reporter. The show airs on March 2. (IndieWire is already getting a jump on predictions.)