• by Wayne Friedman , March 8, 2010

The 2010 Oscars were good -- but not award-winning great.

ABC's "82nd Academy Awards" improved 8% over a year ago with a Nielsen 13.1 rating/30 share among 18-49 viewers for a show running from 8:30 p.m. to 11:39 p.m., when the last commercial airs, according to Nielsen. It pulled in 41.3 million viewers.

But the show didn't rival the all-time Oscar record, as many critics assumed. Industry executives were estimating that because of "Avatar" -- now the biggest box-office selling theatrical movie of all time and a major nominee for many Oscars -- the ratings could rival or top that of "Titanic," which was featured in the Oscar broadcast in 1999, pulling in 55.2 million viewers.

The show scored its best numbers in five years in 2005, when it earned 42.1 million viewer and "Million Dollar Baby" won for Best Picture.

While the show was up in viewers versus a year ago, it was still off 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004 results. This year's show only topped the 2003 show, when "Chicago" won for best picture. It remains as the third-lowest in overall viewers since Nielsen began counting viewership numbers back in 1974.

With "The Barbara Walters Special" pulling in 5.3 rating/16 share among 18-49 viewers, ABC topped a hodgepodge of repeats and news specials, to grab a Nielsen preliminary 10.2/26 among 18-49 viewers. Fox was at a 2.0/5; CBS, a 1.7/4; Univision, a 1.5/4; and NBC a 1.2/3.

Once again, the Academy Awards remained on the less-cluttered TV environments for commercials.

As TV industry analyst Steve Sternberg points out in his blog: "The Sternberg Report," total commercial time accounted for just 18% of the broadcast (39:10 of a three-hour 37-minute show). That is much lower than the typical prime-time industry average of 28% for a TV show. p> There were 43 national commercial spots. Topping the list was Hyundai and JC Penney with 7 apiece; Diet Coke, 5; iPad, 3; and Sprint, 3.