Last year’s Oscars ceremony saw a historical low, at 10.4 million viewers, which means the show on Sunday should have done much, much better, right? Well, the answer isn’t as clear. Despite a big bump from having the event in-person with red carpet coverage and a crowded venue packed with various stars as an extra draw, people still aren’t tuning in at the rate they used to before the pandemic and viewership had already been declining from year to year.
As The Hollywood Reporter points out, the show raised its overall ratings by 60% and 77% with adults 18-49 compared to the 2021’s awards show but still only managed to hit 16.62 million. This might be great news if it wasn’t put into historical context, as this means Sunday’s show was still the second-lowest since the ratings have been tracked since the 1970s and hadn’t dipped below 20 million in viewership until 2021.
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The low viewership is another sign that tinkering with the Oscars format and scaling back the live acceptance speeches for technical awards didn’t have the amazing ratings boom that ABC had hoped for. It remains to be seen if in 2023-2024 ratings will bounce back to that pre-pandemic level of 20 million–that might be a level of viewership they’ll never regain. Oscars might not ever again be appointment viewing as they were 5-10 years ago.
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While some have suggested that Will Smith slapping Chris Rock gave the show a huge boost of interest, that might not be the actual case. Variety mentions that the show got a 500-600,000 spike after the slap, which doesn’t feel like much when we’re talking about many “millions” of people tuning in.
