Last night’s Academy Award ceremony was a pretty strange affair, to begin with. The ceremony was held simultaneously in two locations, The Dolby Theater and Union Station. Of course, due to the COVID pandemic, there was a reduced number of guests at each location.
According to the Nielsen Live+Same Day preliminary national numbers, there was a limited number of people watching from home as well. The results from these preliminary numbers indicate that the ratings were down by about 58% compared to last year’s ceremony.
Although the definitive count on the number of people that actually tuned to watch the show last night will be available maybe until Tuesday, the first numbers out the gate are not encouraging at all.
In total it’s estimated that only 9.85 million viewers tuned in to watch the ceremony. Compared to the 23.6 million people that were said to have watched last year’s show. Those numbers would represent a massive low point in viewership. With the previous low point in the last few years comfortably surpassing the 20 million viewer mark.
The writing was on the wall for the Academy Awards way before the show even aired. The viewership numbers for the Golden Globes this year were also at record lows. With only around 6.9 million viewers tuning in to watch the show. Of course, that award show featured some of the same stars and motion pictures that failed to draw audiences to the Oscars.
Ironically the music industry is in a similar funk. The Grammy awards also posted a viewership drop of about 53% compared to last year.
Obviously, COVID played a role in this factor, as well, the numbers seem to be way down because people were not able to see many of these movies in theaters. Nomadland who took the Oscar for best picture will most likely go down in history as the lowest-grossing film to ever win an Academy Award for best picture.
When it was announced as the winner the movie had only made around 3 million dollars at the box office domestically. The good part for the studio was that they were able to keep the budget of the movie considerably low.
Not everything was bad from the show it had some high points like Glenn Close twerking. Actually, that’s a good thing or a bad thing depending on who you ask. The pretty lackluster show closed with one of the most bizarre endings ever.
Joaquin Phoenix announced that Anthony Hopkins, who was not present, had won the final award for the night. After that, the credits just started rolling. Leaving the few people that tuned in last night with a puzzled look on their faces. This decline could be a sign of things to come for the Academy.
