• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, March 5, 2025

Two sets of viewership numbers told different stories about the ratings for last Sunday’s Oscars telecast on ABC.

On Monday, viewership for the three-and-a-half-hour show was reported to be 18.1 million, down from 19.5 million last year -- a 7% decline.

But on Tuesday came new numbers that showed a teeny-tiny year-to-year increase from last year’s 19.5 million to 19.7 million this year.

The first numbers were Nielsen fast nationals. The second set of numbers, emanating from ABC, accounted for additional measurement of viewership on mobile devices, PCs and the like. So instead of falling, the numbers grew -- at least according to ABC. 

On Monday, ABC reported ratings in adults 18-49 at 3.92, and then revised it upward to 4.54 on Tuesday. 

An increase is certainly better than a decrease, but an audience of 19.5 million compared with 19.7 million is more like breaking even than growing. 

The gap is 200,000 viewers, which doesn’t seem like much to me in the context of TV, but I’m the first to admit that I’m old-fashioned.

No matter how ABC tries to spin them as increases to be celebrated, the needle on the total-viewer numbers barely budged year to year.

The Oscars are in a malaise. Part of the problem is that the movies that were nominated this year had no traction. 

The TV Blog already noted last week that titles such as “The Brutalist,” “Emilia Perez” and “Anora” (which dominated Sunday’s Oscars) were not exactly top-of-mind for moviegoers who still go to the movies, or movie fans who watch them at home.

These movies feel like what used to be known as art-house movies -- beloved by sophisticates, but of no interest to anybody else.

A case in point is “Emilia Perez.” Not that Rotten Tomatoes is the end-all, be-all of statistical analysis, but I checked yesterday and found that “Emilia Perez” had a lowly approval score of 16% in RT’s “Popcornmeter” metric based on 10,000+ comments. The people have spoken.

Photo credit: ABC. “Anora” wins Best Picture Oscar at Sunday’s Oscars.