• by Wayne Friedman , March 7, 2006

Considering the predictions of doom and gloom, the Academy Awards must think it dodged a bullet.

ABC's "The 78th Academy Awards," which featured five movies that collectively did not pull in $200 million in U.S. box office receipts, posted household ratings that were down only 10 percent versus a year ago, and off 8 percent in overall viewers. The show earned a preliminary Nielsen Media Research household 27.1 rating/40 share, pulling in 38.8 million overall viewers. Typically, big box office films pull in big ratings for the Oscar broadcast.

"They had to be pretty happy with that," said Brad Adgate, senior vice president and corporate media director for Horizon Media, "especially considering what happens to other big award shows. Also there's been a lot of [big event] TV out there recently--the Olympics, 'American Idol', and the Super Bowl." Viewers could have pulled back more on the Oscars this year, considering there were back-to-back major events the last five Sundays--The Super Bowl, three Olympics broadcasts, and last night, the Oscars.

The Academy Awards looked to grab younger viewers, hiring Jon Stewart to host the event. Stewart is host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show." ABC says the Oscar program saw ratings 5 percent higher among men 18-34 this year. While the show's overall household numbers were down 10 percent, household ratings were 6 percent higher than in 2003.

A few weeks earlier, the Grammy Awards weren't as lucky. The show aired on a Wednesday after the Super Bowl and a night before NBC's "Winter Olympics" from Torino started. The Grammy broadcast pulled in with a 10.9 household rating/17 share and 17.6 million viewers--its lowest numbers in 11 years. Grammy numbers were off a steep 31 percent from its 2004 numbers.

Critics had predicted that the five mostly small distributed Oscar nominated films, "Brokeback Mountain," "Crash," "Good Night, and Good Luck," "Munich," and "Capote," would send the ratings crashing to new lows.

In a shocker, "Crash" from Lions Gate Entertainment upset strong leading favorite "Brokeback Mountain," to win the Oscar for Best Picture.