Along with this morning’s SAG Award nominations for Best Ensemble and Alan Arkin as Best Supporting Actor, Argo director Ben Affleck is front and center in the debut of Fandango chief correspondent Dave Karger’s original weekly series The Frontrunners.

The significance of The Frontrunners is not the opportunity to hear from a 2012 film awards season contender as people like Affleck are all over the Web. Rather it’s that this particular bit of buzz sits on the Fandango marquee, ready to take advantage of the website’s huge traffic and mobile phone-clicking ticket buyers.

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Blow-By-Blows Kinda Blow: We are puzzled by the pervasiveness of online minute-by-minute accounts of awards shows. Is it really important to note that at “5:35 p.m. — The nominees stand up in the auditorium, a record 177 artists and craftsman, applauding themselves and one another”? We don’t think so. But, if you’re into that kind of thing (you sick little fetishist, you), then you’ll love this.

You Always Remember Your First Time: A surprising number of Oscar virgins were deflowered: Martin Scorsese, Helen Mirren, Forest Whitaker, Jennifer Hudson, Alan Arkin … and, of course, Al Gore.

On A Related Note: American Idol producers are being given the reigns of next September’s Emmys show to make sure it doesn’t, you know, suck.