The 97th annual Academy Awards saw drew 18.07M viewers across ABC and Hulu on Sunday night, per Disney.
Likely not the number that the Mouse House was hoping for, considering it’s a bit of a decline over the past two years. It was about a 7% decrease from last year’s four-year audience high of 19.5M viewers and was just slightly lower than the year prior, when 18.8M tuned in for the 95th annual Academy Awards in 2023.
Before this year, viewership had been on a steady incline, rising heftily from the hostless 2021 Oscars, which drew an audience of 10.4 million. In 2022, the year of the slap seen around the world when subsequent Best Actor winner Will Smith took a whack at presenter Chris Rock, viewership leapt up to 16.6M.
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Who’s to say how the audience was impacted by the multiple technical glitches that Hulu viewers experienced throughout the night. The issues started early on, with reports that some users couldn’t access their accounts when the show began. Others say they were kicked out of the broadcast before the last two categories were announced.
There’s also the sheer length of the show. At 3 hours and 47 minutes, it was one of the longer Oscars on record (but not the longest, by far, as some ceremonies have lasted well over four hours). Longer shows can often be a harder sell to keep audiences engaged.
However, like last year, the Academy opted for an earlier start time Sunday, kicking off the shindig at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT, meaning that the show stayed largely in primetime. That has certainly helped retain some of the audience who may have tapped out in previous years, when it was quite common for the Oscars telecast to go past 11 p.m. ET.
This year’s small audience decline is pretty on par with other award shows recently, suggesting that these ceremonies may be settling into a new normal after all of them saw viewership tank in 2020. The Grammys were down 9% this year, and the Golden Globes were basically the same year-over-year. The Emmys was a different story, up 60% year-over-year, but that audience likely took a hit at least in part because the 2023 ceremony was delayed several months due to the dual strikes.
The 97th Academy Awards saw Sean Baker set a record by winning four Oscars in the same night, for the same movie. Anora took home the top prize, and Baker claimed the awards for Best Editing, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. Mikey Madison scored the film another win for Lead Actress. Adrien Brody took Best Actor for A24’s The Brutalist, 22 years after his win for The Pianist, and Zoe Saldaña and Kieran Culkin surprised few with their wins for Best Supporting Actress and Actor.
See the full list of winners here, and check out Deadline’s review of the Conan O’Brien-hosted telecast here.
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