The 98th Academy Awards, held on Sunday, attracted 17.86 million viewers, and this is across both ABC and Hulu, continuing the trend of declining audiences for major awards shows.
This represents a roughly 9% drop from last year’s post-pandemic high of 19.69 million viewers and marks the smallest Oscars audience since 2022, when 16.68 million tuned in, according to Nielsen’s combined big data and panel ratings.
Many Americans just don’t care about the Oscars anymore, and they can also just watch the highlights on YouTube the next day. Even more concerning, the show is losing its core “loyal” audience, aged 50 and over, who grew up going to the movies but are now more into streaming content at home. If they haven’t seen the movies nominated, then why would they even care who wins?
Isn’t it telling how, just ten years ago, in 2016, Oscar ratings reached nearly 35 million viewers? When compared to last night’s telecast, that’s an audience loss of 17 million.
As much as I adore them, movies 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,” “The King’s Speech,” “Braveheart,” and “Dances with Wolves” were actually seen by millions upon millions of Americans. Now? “CODA”? “Nomadland”? “EEAAO”? “Anora”? Even this year’s Best Picture winner, “One Battle After Another,” only made $72M in North America—and lost Warner Bros. over $100M. Most films that have won, let alone been nominated this decade, haven’t been able to crack popular culture in the same way the others mentioned did. Furthermore, of the last thirteen Best Picture winners, only one has cracked $100M+ at the domestic box office—that’s “Oppenheimer.”
It used to be that movie fans worldwide would, with much anticipation, tune into the Oscars—and, for that matter, almost any awards show. The glitz! The glamour! Waiting to see what film wins Best Picture also meant something, both culturally and historically. Not as much anymore.
It doesn’t help that people used to watch awards shows for the stars. The problem is that today’s movie stars are very different: it would be kind of hard to get Captain America, Spider-Man, Iron Man, and Doctor Strange to walk down the red carpet in their spandex suits… unless Evans, Holland, Downey, and Cumberbatch are game to do that.
We are a society oversaturated with celebrity content via social media, where seeing “content” on YouTube or Netflix, is the main source of entertainment, and thus there’s no excitement in seeing movie stars—whichever few that remain—celebrate each other’s accomplishments. Don’t get me wrong, cinema, in all its forms, will last, but where its impact will be positioned culturally, 10 or 20 years from now, remains to be seen
Remember when, back in August, we learned “The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth” would be playing in only around 350 U.S. theaters, "maybe fewer"? Well, it's fewer. A lot fewer.