Sunday night’s Academy Awards broadcast posted the fourth lowest viewership numbers in its history, drawing a little over 19.5 million viewers. The awards show also lost younger viewers when compared with last year,
The latest broadcast is being celebrated as a success, as ratings climbed slightly from last year’s 18.8 million result. This gave the Academy Awards to their best numbers since the COVID-19 pandemic, a four percent increase overall.
Still, ratings for the Oscars continue to be way down from peak heights. In 1998, which featured “Titanic” as Best Picture winner, the show was watched by a whopping 57 million viewers. Even in 2014, the show still managed to pull in 43 million viewers.
Sunday’s figures were especially mediocre considering the fact that Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” won Best Picture, making it the highest grossing winner since “Lord of The Rings: Return of The King” in 2004. Nolan’s latest film pulled in $950 million at the global box office last summer and won a bundle of Oscars on Sunday, including “Best Actor” and “Best Supporting Actor” wins for Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. respectively.
In addition to the popularity of “Oppenheimer” — as well as Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” — the show also started an hour earlier. This was expected to pull in viewers who otherwise would have skipped the show due to school, work, or other commitments.
Despite all this, the Academy Awards managed just a four percent increase over last year’s viewership, a troubling figure for the show’s future.
Even more troubling was the lack of success with the key 18-49 age group. Sunday’s numbers for the key demographic declined by five percent when compared with last year, signaling that the show will likely never regain its cultural relevance.
Ratings for awards shows as a whole have declined massively since the late 1990’s. Just last month, the Emmy Awards drew record low viewership, declining to just 4.3 million viewers. The last show to generate more than 10 million viewers came in 2018, when 10.2 million people tuned in. For comparison, the Emmys drew more than 20 million viewers in 2000.
Similar trends have been observed for the Grammys and the Golden Globes.