Oscars TV ratings drop by over 50 per cent in new record low

NME

The TV ratings for this year’s Oscars telecast dropped by 58 per cent, Nielsen has confirmed.

The ceremony drew 9.85million viewers in total, per IndieWire, and attracted adults aged 18-49 as a key demographic.

• READ MORE: The biggest talking points from the Oscars 2021: Glenn Close twerking, Yuh-jung Youn’s sass and one big anti-climax

Last year, the Academy Awards were watched by 23.6million viewers and earned a 5.3 rating, versus this year’s 1.9 rating.

However, those figures are in line with ratings for live TV viewership broadly, which has been steadily decreasing for some time.

The Golden Globes, SAG Awards, Grammys and Emmys all saw a substantial ratings decrease from 2020 to 2021.

“We’re worrying about things that we can control and that’s not on that list,” filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, who produced the Oscars telecast this year, told the Hollywood Reporter when asked about the show’s potential ratings earlier this month.

“We’re just making something that we would want to see, that we would think is a good show, because if you’re doing anything other than that, you’re second guessing and you’re lost.”

In other Oscars news, Chadwick Boseman’s family have said the late actor’s Best Actor loss to Anthony Hopkins was not a snub. 

Derrick Boseman said the family wished to congratulate Hopkins, as “I’m sure [Anthony] would if Chad won”.

Describing his brother’s feelings about the awards, Derrick explained Chadwick never considered the Oscars an “obsession”, adding that he “always described them to me as a campaign”.

The post Oscars TV ratings drop by over 50 per cent in new record low appeared first on NME.