Share

Oscars viewership numbers take a plunge

Share your Subscriber Article
You have 5 articles to share every month. Send this story to a friend!
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
loading...
Loading, please wait...
Neil Patrick Harris (AP)
Neil Patrick Harris (AP)

New York — Oscar viewership was down 16% from last year and reached its lowest point since 2009, with 36.6 million people watching the Neil Patrick Harris-hosted awards show on ABC Sunday night.

The Nielsen company's preliminary estimate of US viewership was down from the 43.7 million people who watched last year, a feel-good show where host Ellen DeGeneres attracted attention for posting a "selfie" with various movie stars and having pizzas delivered to the audience.

Last year's show, which also had the star power of Frozen, Matthew McConaughey and U2, reached the biggest audience for any Academy Awards show since 2000.

The Oscars tend to be the most-watched entertainment program of the year on television, often second only to the Super Bowl. But viewership can be affected by the relative popularity of the movies up for big awards, and best picture winner Birdman wasn't a particularly big box office draw. American Sniper was the most popular movie, but received one relatively minor award.

There was also a movement among black viewers to boycott the awards show because all of the major acting nominees were white. There's no way to immediately tell whether this had an impact on the decrease in viewers since Nielsen did not have an immediate breakdown of ethnic viewership.

The lowest since 2009

This year's Oscars audience was the lowest since 36.3 million watched in 2009, when Slumdog Millionaire won best picture.

After a couple of years where awards show ratings in general were going up — a reflection of the desire among viewers for live programming — they appear to have flattened.

Nielsen also said there were 5.9 million messages about the Academy Awards sent out through Twitter in the U.S. That's roughly half the 11.2 million tweets sent out last year, when DeGeneres' selfie replicated like wildfire online.

Facebook said there were 58 million interactions worldwide on the Oscars, including posts and "likes."

The biggest individual moment for Twitter and Facebook was the same: Lady Gaga's medley of songs from The Sound of Music.

Read this for free
South Africans need to be in the know if we want to create a prosperous future. News24 has kept the country informed for 25 years, and we're about to enter a new chapter of fearless journalism. Join our free subscription trial to unlock this story and a world of news aimed to inform, empower, and inspire.
Try our free 14-day trial
Already a subscriber? Sign in
heading
description
username
Show Comments ()
Editorial feedback and complaints

Contact the public editor with feedback for our journalists, complaints, queries or suggestions about articles on News24.

LEARN MORE