Disney has one more thing to celebrate about the 76th Emmy Awards, as it appears the show might finally be back on the up and up.
This year’s telecast drew 6.87M viewers on ABC, according to early Nielsen data. That’s makes it the show’s largest audience in three years, up 60% from earlier this year, when just 4.3M tuned in to Fox for the strike-delayed 75th ceremony in January.
This year’s viewership is also up just slightly compared to the last time it aired on ABC in 2020, when the height of the pandemic necessitated no in-person audience and remote nominees, drawing 6.3M viewers — which was a record low at the time.
The Emmys have taken a hit over the past several years, hitting all-time low after all-time low. While the show did bounce back slightly in 2021 with 7.4M viewers for CBS, it was down again the following year to another previous all-time low with less than 6M people tuning in for the show on NBC.
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There are likely a few reasons why this year saw an uptick in viewers. The show was on a Sunday night again. January’s ceremony took place on a Monday, though that really hasn’t mattered much in the last few years since the show has been on such a steep decline. In fact, this year’s viewership is still lower than the 10.17M viewers who watched the last Monday ceremony on NBC in 2018.
January’s ceremony also suffered from being sandwiched between multiple award shows, including the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards, where The Bear, Beef and Succession swept the top awards at all of them, making the show much more predictable for viewers. Now that the Emmys are back to kicking off the award season (and Succession was out of the running) there was a rejuvenated excitement about the potential winners.
As always, the Emmys still had to go up against the NFL, with NBC’s primetime Houston Texans vs. Chicago Bears matchup as tough competition. The Emmys were also beat by 60 Minutes, which was the top non-sports program of the night with 10.2M viewers.
FX was undoubtedly the night’s biggest winner, with The Bear winning four awards and Shōgun extending a record Emmy year, winning Outstanding Drama Series and three other trophies Sunday night to lead all programs. HBO managed an upset in comedy, despite a down year for the network, as Hacks took the Outstanding Comedy Series award.
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