Despite some stiff Sunday night competition, the 95th Oscars ceremony hosted by Jimmy Kimmel was a ratings success. Nielsen’s initial time zone-adjusted ratings, which factor in out-of-home viewing, suggest that is the case, Variety reports. It should be noted however that this number could alter when all data has been collected and analyzed.
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Hosted by Kimmel for the first time since 2018, this year’s Oscars ceremony enjoyed a 12% rise in ratings compared to last year. Moreover, Nielsen’s fast-national numbers demonstrated that viewership among adults 18-49 jumped 5%, scoring an impressive 4.0 rating point.
Undoubtedly, this year’s Oscars competition earned more attention with the inclusion of some noteworthy films like Top Gun: Maverick. Additionally, viewers may have been wondering how Kimmel and his team will address last year’s controversy regarding Will Smith slapping Chris Rock during the show.
In comparison to the fast-national data from last year, this ceremony had 15.36 million viewers and a 3.2 rating among people aged 18 to 49 years old. After years of film producers presiding over the Oscars, Glenn Weiss and Ricky Kirshner – veterans when it comes to living TV- took over as producing team for the 2023 edition. This year’s ceremony, transmitted from 8 p.m ET till roughly 11:39 p.m., marked their first time in charge of one of Hollywood’s most anticipated events.
The Oscars ratings have been growing for the past three years
Tuesday will bring the definitive “live + same day” Nielsen data from Sunday’s 95th Academy Awards. ABC executives were bracing for unusual numbers due to the start of Daylight Saving Time. They felt it was likely that viewership could be affected by the hour jump in time. In 2021, viewership and ratings for the Oscars plummeted to an all-time low. Only 10.5 million viewers tuned in and a 2.2 rating among adults 18-49.
With Beyoncé’s remote performance and the highly talked about the altercation between Rock and Smith, the 2022 telecast drew in a staggering 16.6 million viewers. That is an astonishing 58% jump from 2021. Additionally, it achieved an average of 3.8 ratings (73% increase) among adults aged 18-49 demographic. After time-shifted viewing was added up over days following its airing, viewership shot up to 17.6 million viewers. This makes it the highest-rated non-sports program of last year.
The current record holder for the most watched Oscars telecast is 1998. That’s when 55.3 million viewers tuned in to see Titanic take home Best Picture. Even as recently as 2014, 43.6 million people were still watching the show (when “12 Years a Slave” won). After 2017’s 33 million viewers count with the victory of “Moonlight,” we had to wait until 2020–right before this pandemic started–to witness more than 30 million tuning into an Oscar night again, and that was 23.6 million who saw Bong Joon Ho’s film “Parasite” win it all!