Sunday night’s Oscar telecast was another Hollywood humiliation. Only 18.1 million viewers tuned in, which is the third-worst rating in Academy history.
Only 2021, with 10.4 million viewers, and 2022, with 16.6 million, fared worse. Sunday’s pathetic 18.1 million is the third lowest since 1974, when these numbers were first recorded.
The sycophants in the entertainment media can’t blame streaming this time, not when the ceremony was simulcast on Hulu.
The sycophants in the entertainment media cannot blame the coronavirus. The statute of limitations on that excuse is long past its expiration date.
So what are they blaming it on? Two rather hilarious excuses: Hulu had some glitches, and there was no cultural phenomenon this year like there was last year with the whole BarbenHeimer (Barbie + Oppenheimer) craze.
To prove just how lame those excuses are, one need only reach allll the waaaaaay baaaaaacccckkkk to … 2023 — or, the year before last.
In 2023, the Oscars were not streamed on Hulu or anyplace else. Nevertheless, more people (18.7 million) still tuned in.
Oh, and in 2023, there was no Barbenheimer craze. The frontrunner (and eventual winner) was Everything Everywhere All at Once, which only grossed $77 million domestic.
Sure, 2023’s Barbie was that year’s top grosser with $636 million domestic compared to 2024’s Wicked, which grossed just $433 million. But two 2024 movies — Deadpool & Wolverine ($637M), Inside Out 2 ($653M) — out-grossed 2023’s Barbie, and Inside Out 2 was up for this year’s Best Animated Feature Oscar.
For some 40 years, the Oscars reliably attracted anywhere from 32 million to 42 million viewers without breaking a sweat. The ratings collapse began in 2016 when President Trump was first elected, which is when the left lost its mind and, along with its mind, the self-control required to disguise just how much they hate us Normal People. This definitely includes the hateful, alienating, and insulting world of entertainment.
Think about this… For the first time, the Oscar telecast was made available to about 54 million domestic Hulu subscribers, and the program still lost 1.4 million viewers compared to last year — 19.5 million to just 18.1 million.
Trust me, that was not the outcome anyone expected.
So, in less than a decade, a show that was once something that unified our culture around our shared love of movies and had not dipped below 32 million viewers since 1974, is now unable to attract even 20 million viewers.
The only good news out of Sunday’s Academy Award show is that, at least in my opinion, the correct film took home Best Picture. I loved Anora and was pleased to see its creator, Sean Baker, break a record for personal Oscar wins for a single movie: Picture, Original Screenplay, Editing, and Director. Anora’s knock-out star, Mikey Madison, also went home with some well-deserved gold. She was nothing short of a revelation.
What’s more, Conan O’Brien was a good choice to host. He is nowhere near as toxic or divisive as Jimmy Kimmel.
Nevertheless, it might be too late to woo Normal People back. The show, as far as a telecast goes, has always been pretty awful and overlong. We were willing to put up with that, though, because we loved movies and the movies seemed to love us.
Those days are long over.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.
