With controversies seemingly every day leading up to last night’s telecast, the 2019 Oscars had all the makings of a true trainwreck. That being said, the show went on, and survived, without so much as one major flub (unless you count the “Green Book” Best Picture win, HEY OH!). Hostless for the first time in decades, the ceremony turned out to not only be one of the leanest and fun Oscars in the last few years, but actually seems to have improved in the ratings department, as well.
READ MORE: The Snubs & Surprises Of The 2019 Oscars
According to THR, the early ratings for last night’s Oscars sit at 21.6 rating/36 share. If these early numbers pan out, we’re looking at a total viewership hovering around 30 million. Of course, even though 30 million sounds like a huge number, it would still rank as the second lowest number of viewers of all-time, behind only last year’s telecast. As you probably remember, last year’s Oscars earned an abysmal 18.9/32 rating, which translated to 26.54 million viewers.
Taking last year out of the discussion, for now, the 2019 Oscars has the lowest total viewership (in preliminary numbers) since 2008’s 32 million. Again, this isn’t the type of number that is going to send Academy president John Bailey and ABC celebrating in the streets. However, it does prove that there’s an argument to be made that the folks behind the scenes were onto something with the leaner run-time and hosting situation (or lack thereof).
READ MORE: In The End The 2019 Oscars Turned Out To Be An Epic Tease
Perhaps the president of ABC was right when she proudly discussed the anticipation of this year’s ceremony, in the face of all the controversy. While we scoffed at the assertion that the 2019 awards show would be anything more than a cautionary tale, the Academy and ABC proved that you don’t need Kevin Hart to entertain for 4+ hours. Instead, you can give viewers something (maybe) better, and apparently more enjoyable to tune into.
We’ll have more deep-dive analysis over the next couple of days, but it’ll be interesting to see what the big takeaways are from the 2019 telecast and what will be carried over into 2020. Maybe hostless is the way to go?
Click here for more from our Oscars 2019 coverage.