• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, February 1, 2023

The Grammy Awards will try again this Sunday on CBS to turn its ratings fortunes around after viewership nosedived in 2021 and 2022.

But where viewership trends for TV’s highest-profile awards shows are concerned, the odds don’t favor a turnaround for the Grammys this year.

To be clear, the TV Blog would like nothing more than to write columns all year long about year-to-year growth in the ratings for the biggest awards show -- Emmys, Grammys and Oscars.

But that has not been the case for a number of years now. Thus, the story has been one of steady losses. For the Grammys in particular, the fall has been precipitous.

This annual, televised celebration of the recording industry, featuring virtually all of the year’s hottest, A-list performers on stage and in the audience, fell from an estimated total audience of 19.88 million in 2019 and 18.7 million in 2020 to 8.8 million in 2021 and 8.9 million last year.

To put this in perspective, viewership was just shy of 40 million as recently as 2012, a tally that is unheard of today except for football.

For example, CBS announced on Tuesday that viewership for Sunday’s close-fought AFC championship between the Bengals and Chiefs amounted to 53.12 million viewers.

Meanwhile, Grammy viewership from 2020 to 2021 declined by 10 million viewers representing a 54% loss year-to-year.

With viewership for 2021 and 2022 virtually identical, has Grammy viewership now plateaued? If so, it is a plateau that no one involved in the show -- primarily CBS and the awards’ governing body, The Recording Academy -- is likely happy about.

This year’s Grammy Awards is the 65th. It is scheduled to air live on CBS from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern from the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, formerly the Staples Center.

For the second year in a row, the host is Trevor Noah, who exited Paramount Global-owned Comedy Central in December after when he left “The Daily Show” after seven years as host.

“The 65th Annual Grammy Awards” air live on Sunday (February 5) starting at 8 p.m. Eastern on CBS.