Let the backlash begin. Like some of the most polarizing best picture winners -- 'Shakespeare in Love,' 'Crash,' 'No Country for Old Men' -- Wednesday's Academy Award rules change to its top category is splitting Oscar voters. The chorus of dissenters says the new inclusion of 10 best picture nominees will diminish the award's value, encourage bloc voting for obscure titles and possibly yield a best picture winner that earns less than 11 percent of the total votes cast. 'I think it undermines the integrity of the Academy Awards,' said marketing consultant Dennis Rice, a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' public relations branch. 'I have trouble most years finding five movies to nominate.' Said Robert Solo, an academy member for more than 35 years and the producer of 1978's 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers': 'It just eviscerates the whole value of the award. They did this because they're not getting the television ratings. Is this what the academy is about? They're worried the program would be canceled, but that's not why the academy was created. This is merchandising. This is not award giving.' The organization Wednesday said that it was doubling the number of best picture nominees from five to 10 starting with next year's awards (the ceremony is scheduled for March 7). Ratings for the annual Oscar broadcast have been plummeting, and even though this year's broadcast attracted more viewers -- 36.3 million -- than recent shows, the academy has been looking for ways to give the ceremony a more populist appeal. 'There will still only be one winner, but we have to change with the times,' said producer Hawk Koch, an academy vice president and member of its board of governors who supports the rule change. 'We are not only an organization of small independent films.' Koch did say, however, that because there will be 10 finalists for the top trophy, the academy at its next board meeting will discuss whether to amend its voting procedures, where the film with the most votes -- no matter the total -- takes the statuette. All of the roughly 5,800 members of the academy are eligible to vote for the best picture nominees and winner. 'We want to make sure 11 percent doesn't get best picture,' said Koch, the producer of 'Untraceable.' In increasing the number of best picture finalists, the awards group hopes it might be able to recognize box-office blockbusters that typically do not make the short list for Hollywood's highest honor. But several academy members, some of whom said they were blindsided by the announcement, and Oscar campaign strategists said it wasn't clear if the additional best picture spots would go to box-office hits such as 'Star Trek' and 'Up' or substantially less popular (but critically acclaimed) art movies. Under the academy's voting rules, the tabulations of which films narrowly missed being nominated for best picture are known only to the accountants, so no one involved in the rules change knows if last year's runners-up were 'Doubt' and 'The Wrestler' or 'The Dark Knight' or 'Iron Man.' Judd Bernard, an academy member and producer of 'The Marseille Contract,' said he was surprised by Wednesday's news and felt the rank and film should have been asked about the rules change before it was announced. He was concerned that by trying to include blockbuster titles the academy will overvalue box-office returns. 'I do hope that this does not mean that just because a picture makes 9 zillion dollars, it will automatically be an academy picture,' Bernard said. 'Next year's winner will be `Transformers.' A picture makes a lot of money, but it doesn't mean it's a great movie. If excellence in achievement just meant money, then Bernie Madoff would get an academy award.' The rules change no doubt will boost the income of Oscar consultants, who can charge $15,000 a month for coordinating a movie's awards campaign, and then receive bonuses of as much as $20,000 for a nomination in a top category and another $20,000 for a win. Several consultants, who declined to be identified, said they were concerned that small but cohesive blocs of Oscar voters -- there are 400 academy members in the United Kingdom, for example, who might band together for one movie -- might be able to push a little movie into the big category. Under the ranked system used by the Academy to select nominees (which is a different from the procedure to pick winners), the voting members will list their top 10 best picture selections in order of preference. According to Douglas Amy, a professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College who is an expert on voting systems, it will now take as few as 525 people putting a movie as one of their top choices for that film to land among the 10 potential best picture winners (assuming most of the members vote). When there were five nominees, the minimum requirement was around 930, Amy said. (Optional add end) 'The good part about this is it means a wider variety of movies that a significant minority like should be chosen,' he said. With an extra five slots available, in other words, ranked voting will allow films that provoke strongly divergent opinions but have a passionate voting bloc to land a nomination. Movies that do not receive any first-place votes are eliminated from best picture consideration. Therefore, it is conceivable that films that are many voters' fifth or eighth picks won't get a nomination. David Foster, a veteran producer ('The Mask of Zorro,' 'The River Wild') and academy member, said he welcomed the changes. 'Clearly something was wrong the last bunch of years. If something is wrong with something, you have to figure out a way to correct it,' Foster said. 'I think it's good we expand. Some of the old rules are too old. This is the 21st century, for God's sake.' 