The Critics Choice Awards Joins The Other Awards Shows On Low Ratings

The ratings for the Critics Choice Awards are in, and like the 2023 Golden Globes Awards, they are below expectations.

Even though the ceremony was graced by the upper echelon of Hollywood and their amazing fashions, the 28th annual event was carried out on Sunday, January 15, without much fanfare. Despite that snag, the ceremony ended with an expected win for "Everything Everywhere All At Once" in the Best Picture category, among others.

When The CW aired the 28th Critics Choice Awards over the weekend, none of the execs expected that they would have less than a million people watching. However, that is what happened when early ratings showed that the glamorous ceremony got the attention of only 900,000 viewers.

That number is a barely noticeable dip from last year's ceremony, which only got an audience of 1.1 million despite it simultaneously airing on TNT and The CW.

Deadline claims that although overall viewership decreased, The CW's audience appeared to be better than it was a year ago because TNT did not simulcast the event this year.

Additionally, the decline in viewership is similar to other awards shows, which have lost a large portion of their audience over the last few years. In fact, NBC recorded its lowest ratings when it aired the Golden Globes on Tuesday, January 11, garnering 6.3 million viewers. 

Over the three-hour period that the Critics Choice aired, A24's "Everything Everywhere All at Once" earned five nods, including Best Picture,  Best Editing for Paul Rogers, Best Supporting Actor for Ke Huy Quan, Best Director for the Daniels — Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert — and Best Original Screenplay for the Daniels.

While Quan was the only actor from the adventure sci-fi film who walked away with an award, he was not its only acting nominee. Michelle Yeoh was in the running for Best Actress but lost to Cate Blanchett for the 2022 drama musical "Tár." 

Jamie Lee Curtis and Stephanie Hsu were also nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category. Unfortunately, they both lost to Angela Bassett for her portrayal of Ramona in "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever."

Others who got nods were Brendan Fraser as Best Actor for "The Whale" and Bob Odenkirk as Best Actor in a Drama Series for "Better Call Saul." "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery" won the Best Acting Ensemble, while the Best Comedy Series went to ABC's "Abbott Elementary."

As we mentioned earlier, the 80th annual Golden Globe Awards earned a record-low rating of 6.3 million viewers. Per The Blast, that number was an unexpected drop following the goodness it enjoyed in 2020 when 18.3 million watched the broadcast. 

This year's event was so bad that it earned a 1.1 ads rating, marking a 9% (compared to 6.9 million people who watched in 2021) and a 26% drop, respectively. That decline did not deter NBC execs from declaring that the revered show was the "most social special event across all of television season-to-date (linear and streaming), both in terms of social engagements and social video views."

According to them, the proof of that was that the Globes "garnered nearly 11 million digital page views and video views, up +54% from 2021" across NBC Digital and E! News platforms. 

Unlike the Critics, the Globes' drop can be traced to the backlash they have suffered in the last two years. In case you missed it, the ceremony's organizers, The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), were accused of practicing dubious financial practices within and having little evidence of diversity and representation regarding Black members.

The allegations had been so widespread that the nonprofit group hosted a private ceremony that excluded its nominated celebs last year. Its newly appointed president Helen Hoehne eventually addressed the issue publicly and announced that the organization had undergone some reforms.  

To that end, NBC had signed a one-year broadcast agreement with the HFPA and Globes producer Dick Clark Productions. The deal gave the HFPA and DCP room to "explore new opportunities for domestic and global distribution across a variety of platforms in the future."