Academy Awards viewership falls by 9 per cent, its first decline since post-pandemic interval
LOS ANGELES:
The variety of folks in the US tuning in reside to look at the Oscars dropped by 9 p.c from final yr, viewing figures launched Tuesday confirmed.
Round 17.9 million folks noticed political thriller “One Battle After One other,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio, take house the highest prize at Hollywood’s premier awards gala on Sunday.
That included folks watching on the ABC broadcast community and streamer Hulu, each of that are owned by Disney.
The 98th Academy Awards was hosted by comic Conan O’Brien, and featured musical segments that paid tribute to the Netflix phenomenon “Ok-Pop Demon Hunters” and box-office hit “Sinners,” Ryan Coogler’s vampire meditation on race relations in America.
Michael B. Jordan, who performed twin brothers Smoke and Stack in “Sinners,” took house the very best actor Oscar, after a decent race by which Timothee Chalamet had been anticipated to triumph for his unlikeable ping pong participant in “Marty Supreme.”
The present additionally included a prolonged “In Memoriam” phase, paying tribute to actor Robert Redford, which included a uncommon stage efficiency from Barbra Streisand.
The Academy Awards broadcast, which as soon as routinely drew audiences of 40 million, noticed its viewership plummet to 10.4 million within the pandemic strangled yr of 2021.
Since then, it had been progressively recovering viewership, till this yr.
In 2025, when Sean Baker’s “Anora” was named Greatest Image, the printed reached a wider viewers because of streaming companies, which introduced the occasion to cell phones and computer systems.
This yr’s decline aligns with tendencies seen in different awards season occasions, such because the Golden Globes and the Grammys, each of which skilled comparable drops in viewership.
Sunday’s telecast additionally confronted competitors from sports activities with the World Baseball Basic semi-finals, by which the US defeated the Dominican Republic.
The Oscars, which shut out Hollywood’s awards season, will likely be broadcast completely on YouTube beginning in 2029.
The 98th Academy Awards ceremony, offered by the Academy of Movement Image Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), came about on March 15, 2026, on the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, United States. Through the gala, the AMPAS offered Academy Awards (generally known as the Oscars) in 24 classes, honoring movies launched in 2025. The ceremony was televised in the US by ABC and streamed on Hulu. Comic Conan O’Brien returned to host the present for the second consecutive time, after receiving approval for internet hosting the earlier yr, with Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan returning as govt producers for the third consecutive yr, and Hamish Hamilton returning as director.
One Battle After One other gained a number one six awards, together with Greatest Image and Greatest Casting, turning into the inaugural recipient for the latter class. Different winners included Sinners with 4 awards; Frankenstein with three; KPop Demon Hunters with two; and All of the Empty Rooms, Avatar: Fireplace and Ash, F1, The Woman Who Cried Pearls, Hamnet, Mr No one Towards Putin, Sentimental Worth, The Singers, Two Folks Exchanging Saliva, and Weapons with one every. The telecast drew 17.86 million viewers in the US.
The sixteen nominations obtained by Sinners are probably the most in Oscar historical past. It additionally broke the file for many Black people nominated for a single movie at ten. Quite a few movie critics and journalists praised the breakthrough of nominations, applauding the Academy for embracing Black cinema and the horror style.
