As I predicted the Academy Awards ceremony racked up its lowest viewership in years. From the Hollywood Reporter:
Last year’s Academy Awards, which earned a 22.4 overnight rating, ultimately fetched 32.9 million viewers for ABC, as well as a handsome 9.1 rating among adults 18-49. Still, those numbers reflected the second-lowest in Academy history. (ABC did not immediately report the adults 18-49 rating for Sunday’s Oscars, and Nielsen won’t widely distribute that information until Tuesday.)
The night was not as political as many recent award shows, with showings of partisanship few and far between. The fallout and response to the exposure of sexual harassment and assault in the entertainment industry was an obvious throughline, and honorees like best actress winner Frances McDormand made stands for inclusivity and representation in the industry. And host Jimmy Kimmel seems to have earned praise for another solid performance during his second consecutive year onstage.
But the writing was largely on the wall for lows, either way. All three marquee events of the U.S. TV calendar thus far — the Golden Globe Awards, the Grammys and the Super Bowl — were off significantly from 2017.
People want to be entertained by entertainers not lectured by them. Physician heal thyself. An industry divided among abusers, their enablers, and victims is only entertaining in the way a house on fire or a train wreck are.
The show was also on at the same time as The Walking Dead.
And really, who wants to sit through three-plus hours of it when you can catch the highlights the next morning on Youtube?