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Oscars hits all-time low

Massive drop-off for 2021 awards, stripped back due to the pandemic.

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Not much more needs to be said about yesterday’s panned Oscars broadcast, a victim of both the pandemic and some dumb decision-making.

But it hit a record low in the US, at 9.85 million viewers – a 58.3%, drop-off from last year’s 23.6 million viewers. Whoa…

It’s been tough times for awards shows, with the the 2021 Golden Globes down by 62% and the 63rd Grammy Awards down by nearly 53%.

In Australia the Oscars were also down.

It drew 212,000 for the live morning broadcast on Seven and just 100,000 in a primetime repeat, both down on 2020’s 305,000 (and a 124,000 7flix replay).

Here are recent US audiences, winners and host.

2010: 41.3 million, The Hurt Locker (Steve Martin/Alec Baldwin)
2011: 37.9 million, The King’s Speech (Anne Hathaway/James Franco)
2012: 39.3 million, The Artist (Billy Crystal)
2013: 40.3 million, Argo (Seth MacFarlane)
2014: 43.7 million, 12 Years a Slave (Ellen DeGeneres)
2015: 37.3 million, Birdman (Neil Patrick Harris)
2016: 34.4 million, Spotlight (Chris Rock)
2017: 32.9 million, Moonlight (Jimmy Kimmel)
2018: 26.5 million, The Shape of Water (Jimmy Kimmel)
2019: 29.6 million, Green Book (No host)
2020: 23.6 million, Parasite (No host)
2021: 9.85 million, Nomadland (No host / Pandemic impacted)

Source: Variety

13 Responses

  1. Ummmm, because award shows have become so generic and boring. No host to banter with guests and keep some running jokes going (hello Billy Crystal). Instea never ending stream of preened celebs walk out together, awkwardly and poorly read an auto cue of generally non funny lines, hand out an award and pass over to a celeb to preach about their latest political issues. We don’t get to see any different side to the presenters, so no real incentive to watch. No funny montages of the past year, no looking back with older clips etc. iI’s the same with Logies as well. So bland now, no spark, no unexpected moments. They’ve polished them too much. Not event TV like it used to be. Ratings will continue to slide unless some life is pumped back in.

  2. Despite the fact that I half expected it to happen, this made me laugh out loud. They can’t blame the ‘you-know-what’ bug because this should have been an opportunity for Hollywood to bring us a few hours of escapism from all the woes of the world. After all, escapism is what they do …. or did. But despite all the ‘talent’ that Hollywood is supposed to have, they failed dismally. R.I.P. Hollywood, you were great …. once.

  3. Not surprised honestly. As a film lover, I have watched every Oscars for the last 36 of my 44 years on this planet. This years ceremony wasn’t a celebration of film and the art form that I love, it was a bitter and depressing wokefest. For the first time ever I turned the ceremony off. At least the right people won their awards though.

  4. Some of the blame on low numbers could be due to the pandemic and its effect on the industry but I’ll add I stopped watching due to the pampered elite standing behind the microphone lecturing us paupers how to live our lives. Stop using the stage to lecture us about climate change or whatever tree hugging fancy takes your mind. Thank your agent, director, producers, co-stars, the academy and get off. I’m so over these elitists having the pleasure of flying around the world to exotic locations and then telling me to turn the light off. You first. Rant over.

  5. They have all the money in the world to make this show but still manage to stuff it up ? It ain’t that hard people, but entertainment and fun gets shoved to the back of the bus when PC comes to town …

  6. Because no one went to the cinema🤷🏻‍♂️ the general public didn’t know the movies, unless you went out of your way to find them, but there has been a decline in viewership of all award shows over the past 10odd years.

  8. Streaming is the future for the movie industry, so removing the wheat from the chaff as far as quality is concerned will be highly selective, opening the door for a few esoteric and non mainstream offerings to get nominated for an Oscar.
    It’s doubtful that the Oscars will end it’s all about industry self promotion after all, but the era of mainstream classical Hollywood films and their high profile stars has probably concluded.

  9. I think the pandemic and the fact that all of the nominated films were hardly seen by anyone in the past year obviously affected the ratings.But still that’s a huge drop off in one year,and it must be concerning to the academy.It’s hard to believe that they were getting around 40 million viewers only a decade ago,and now it’s down to ten million.

  10. And I guess then not the finest hour for respected Hollywood producer Steven Soderbergh (“Oceans” movies and long-time George Clooney collab), who was producing the Oscars for America’s ABC.

  11. Not having Best Picture last was the single stupidest thing in Oscar history. I honestly thought I’d fallen asleep and missed Actor and Actress.

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