Oscars viewership rose to 16.6 million after last year's historic low, but is still down from pre-pandemic ratings
- 16.6 million viewers tuned into the Oscars on Sunday.
- That's up from last year's historic low, but still down from the show's pre-pandemic audience.
This post was originally published on March 28. It has been updated with final same-day viewership information.
The Oscars viewership this year was up from last year's historic low, but hasn't rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.
16.6 million viewers tuned into the 94th Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday on ABC, according to final same-day ratings information from Nielsen. Early figures, which weren't time-zone adjusted, had the number at 15.4 million viewers.
Last year, the early figure was 9.85 million viewers, with a final of 10.5 million, which was a historic low for the awards show. This marks the second-lowest viewership for the telecast ever.
Here are the final viewership numbers of previous years:
- 2021 (first telecast during pandemic): 10.5 million
- 2020: 23.6 million
- 2019: 29.6 million
- 2018: 26.6 million
The 2021 Oscars faced a mountain of obstacles. Due to the pandemic, the ceremony was pushed to late April, a much later date than the typical February or March telecasts.
And as studios delayed many films and movie theaters continued to recover from the pandemic, the nominated movies last year largely flew under the radar of audiences (the highest-grossing best-picture contender at the US box office last year was "Promising Young Woman" with $6 million).
This year saw a more widely seen best-picture lineup that included the sci-fi epic "Dune," which grossed $400 million worldwide last year while also streaming on HBO Max, and "Don't Look Up," Netflix's No. 2 biggest movie ever.
But in the face of dwindling ratings, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Oscars voting body) introduced two Twitter-voted awards to acknowledge a best movie "cheer moment" of all time and a "fan-favorite" movie from last year.
"Zack Snyder's Justice League" won the former and Netflix's "Army of the Dead," also directed by Snyder, won the latter.
Eight categories were also presented before the live telecast, with portions of the winners' acceptance speeches edited in throughout the show, in a divisive move that was an apparent effort to streamline the ceremony. It was still longer than last year's telecast at more than three and a half hours.