• by Wayne Friedman , February 27, 2012

ABC's “84th Annual Academy Awards” made some gains versus a year ago.

The big Oscar award show grew 4% to 39.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen preliminary results. The show had the second largest audience in five years. When it comes key demographics, ABC hit the exact same 18-49 demo numbers as it did a year ago -- a 11.7 rating. It did pick up two-tenths of a rating point among women 18-49 to a 14.1 number.

ABC said digitally the event witnessed rapid growth. The site, oscar.com, had 10.2 million unique visitors since the nominations were announced -- a gain of 42% over a year ago, and the "Oscar" app was downloaded 370,000 times.