• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, February 25, 2025

ABC and the Oscars are hoping for a fourth year of audience growth with this Sunday’s 97th Academy Awards.

But can this awards show increase its audience with nominated movies that many have never heard of?

Oscar audiences might be meager in this day and age compared with long ago, but the modest growth since 2021 is better than nothing. 

You might say the annual Academy Awards on ABC had nowhere to go but up after the 2021 show drew a total audience of 10.4 million -- by far the lowest in the television history of the Oscars. 

That was the Oscars that awarded the best movies of 2020, which happened to be the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.

Attendance at movie theaters dwindled to nothing, which meant that for most people, the Oscar race that year was meaningless. For the record, “Nomadland” was Best Picture.

The next-lowest Oscar ratings in history was the following year, 2022 -- 16.62 million, a 37% increase. Will Smith attacked Chris Rock and the Best Picture was “CODA.”

The 2023 Oscars audience was 18.7 million (Best Picture: “Everything Everywhere All At Once”). The 2024 audience was 19.5 million (Best Picture: “Oppenheimer”).

Quick, how many of you just now had to look up “Nomadland” and “CODA” because you forgot what these movies were? I did.

For some reason, however, it was easy for me to remember “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” I remember that I thought it was terrible, but at least I went to see it.

I also remembered “Oppenheimer,” perhaps because it was only last year that it won, and also because it was one of the best-promoted movies of the year. Remember “Barbenheimer”?

I didn’t see “Oppenheimer,” but I knew about it -- which brings us to a question that arises often at Oscar time: How do familiarity and awareness of the year’s multi-nominated movies drive Oscar ratings, if they drive them at all?

Take this year’s 10 Best Picture nominees. They are: “Anora,” “The Brutalist,” “A Complete Unknown,” “Conclave,” “Dune: Part Two,” “Emilia Perez,” “I’m Still Here,” “Nickel Boys,” “The Substance” and “Wicked.”

Of the 10, I know immediately what five of them are: “The Brutalist” (because I happen to like brutalist architecture and Adrien Brody), “A Complete Unknown” (the one about Bob Dylan), “Conclave” (because I saw it), “Dune: Part Two” (because I have a vague awareness of the original “Dune” sci-fi novel), and “Wicked” (because it was the best-promoted of the bunch, and I saw it).

I am familiar with the names of the other five, but my awareness of their subject matter varies from movie to movie.

The point is that this year, there does not seem to be a movie or movies at what you might call the gravitational center of the action this year -- the ones that stand out from all others.

Last year’s were “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie.” In past years, in no particular order, you had “Titanic,” “Gladiator,” “Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” “The Artist,” “Argo” and “12 Years a Slave” (especially that one).

If there is any one of the 10 Best Picture nominees this year that stands out from the rest, it is “Wicked.” 

This was a crowd-pleaser adapted from a hugely popular Broadway musical that has played for years. 

Can interest in “Wicked” drive another audience increase for the Oscars? Maybe, but only modestly. 

The Oscars have other problems too -- among them the show’s propensity in recent years for trafficking in content that depresses family viewership, plus social-issue virtue signaling that for many, is a signal to tune out.

“The 97th Oscars,” hosted by Conan O’Brien, air live Sunday night at 7 Eastern on ABC.