Oscar Ratings Stable — 19.6 Million Viewers

UPDATE: The latest numbers now have it at 19.6 million viewers, which is slightly up from last year’s 19.4. That’s a five year high, but still nowhere near pre-pandemic figures.

EARLIER: No surprise. Ratings for Sunday night’s Oscars ceremony were down by about 7% from last year. Around 18.1 million people tuned in to the telecast.

Isn’t it amazing how in 2014, just a little over ten years ago, Oscar ratings reached an impressive 44 million viewers? When compared to last night’s telecast, that’s a loss of 26 million set of eyeballs. It’s an astounding drop in relevance.

It doesn’t help that fewer people saw this year’s nominated films, so they had less of an incentive to tune in. Unlike the 2024 telecast, there was no “Barbenheimer.” Then again, this year’s Best Picture lineup still had “Wicked” and “Dune: Part Two,” both box office hits, but neither had the narrative drive of ‘Barbenheimer’ nor were they actual serious contenders to win the big prize.

Conan was a great host, but the show was nearly four hours long. The two musical numbers– Queen Latifah’s Quincy Jones tribute and the clunky James Bond segment — were unnecessary. There certainly was no “I’m Just Ken.”

Even more concerning, the show is losing its core "loyal" audience, which is the 50 and over crowd, who grew up going to the movies, but are now more into streaming content at home. Despite that, the 18-34 demographic grew and that could hint at genera enthusiasm for cinema from the modern-day moviegoer,.

Oscar-nominated movies also just aren’t as culturally relevant as they used to be. One can remember a time when Best Picture winners such as “Gladiator,” “Titanic,” “The Silence of the Lambs,” “Forrest Gump,” and even “A Beautiful Mind” were box office behemoths, and water cooler topics of discussion. Now? “CODA”? “Nomadland”? “Anora”? These simlply aren’t films that come close to cracking the cultural zeitgeist.

Fact of the matter is that the Oscars have been on a downward spiral for, at least, a decade now. This year’s ceremony was the third least-watched Oscar telecast ever, or at least since they started gathering up the Neilson numbers.