Oscar viewership sinks to four-year low

This year’s Academy Awards went to popular films made with real movie stars and by blockbuster directors, but even that wasn’t enough to get more than 20 million to watch the show on TV. Coming off last year’s five-year high, likely caused by the gravitational pull of Emilia Pérez, the numbers are in and, per Variety, Sunday’s show attracted 17.9 million viewers on ABC and Hulu. The ceremony dropped 9% from last year, making it the smallest audience since 2022 when the show brought in 16.6 million viewers. For those keeping track at home, that’s the year CODA won Best Picture and Will Smith slapped Chris Rock. If a performance of “Golden” isn’t enough to bring people in, maybe the show really does need to lean into brain-rot aesthetics, as host Conan O’Brien suggested, when it jumps to YouTube in a few years. 

Still, considering the state of network television and the perpetually collapsing movie business, 17.9 million people watching the same show at the same time seems like a win in 2026. According to Disney, at least, which has reason to be biased, the show was the number 1 prime-time entertainment show of the season, so how bad could it really have done. Plus, the show still gets bragging rights for trouncing the Golden Globes and the Grammys. It might be the show’s first viewership drop since 2021, but it’s certainly better than the 10.4 million viewers that tuned in 2020 to watch Anthony Hopkins accept his Best Actor win on Zoom. Sunday’s broadcast is also the first Oscars that are subject to Nielsen’s new big data plus panel rating system, which combines both Nielsen households and smart TV data. Last year’s numbers used the old system.

We guess the takeaway is that the Oscars can still reliably attract more than 15 million people. It doesn’t even seem to matter whether the show is rewarding art-house favorites, streaming melodramas, or blockbuster vampire movies. But if we must draw a conclusion, sadly it’s this: If the Oscars ever want to reach those 2025 highs again, they’re going to have to consider nominating Emilia Pérez another 13 times.

However, if the problem was Conan O’Brien, then producers have nothing to worry about. The Christmas Adventurers Club already showed him to his “new office.”