TV Ratings: Oscars Score Post-Pandemic Highs
The 96th Academy Awards draw 19.5 million viewers, the most for any awards show since 2020.
BY RICK PORTER, March 11, 2024
The 2024 Oscars were the most watched in four years.
The Jimmy Kimmel-hosted telecast on ABC averaged 19.5 million viewers, according to time zone-adjusted fast national ratings from Nielsen. That’s a 4 percent increase from a year ago. The 96th Academy Awards scored the biggest audience for any awards show since 2020, when that year’s Oscars — held a month before the U.S. went into lockdown in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic — drew 23.64 million viewers.
Last year’s ceremony drew 18.76 million viewers. The Oscar telecast has slowly built back its audience after bottoming out with the pandemic-affected 2021 awards, which drew only 10.4 million viewers for a vastly scaled-down telecast (which also aired in late April, not its usual March spot).
While the show’s total audience grew a bit, ratings among adults 18–49 slipped a little. The Oscars earned a 3.81 rating in the key ad-sales demographic — equivalent to about 5.03 million people in the 18–49 age group. That’s down from a 4.03 rating (5.32 million) a year ago.
Sunday’s telecast started at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT, an hour earlier than in recent years. The earlier start (and end) time likely played a part in the show’s audience growth, as did the presence of two blockbuster best picture nominees in Oppenheimer and Barbie. The audience for the Oscars peaked in its final half-hour with 21.9 million viewers.
The Oscars remained the most watched awards show of the season, outdrawing February’s Grammy Awards by about 2.4 million viewers. Both the Grammys and the Golden Globes (9.47 million viewers) had substantial audience growth this year, while the delayed Emmy Awards went the other way, falling to an all-time low in viewers in January.
Oppenheimer — the highest-grossing best picture winner since The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King 20 years ago — led the night with seven awards, including best director (Christopher Nolan) and best actor (Cillian Murphy) along with its best picture triumph. Poor Things (four Oscars) and The Zone of Interest (two) were the only other multiple winners Sunday.
Following the Oscars, an episode of Abbott Elementary drew the show’s largest same-day audience ever, scoring 6.9 million viewers and a 1.42 rating (1.87 million people) in adults 18–49. The latter figure is the best for an original network comedy episode since the series finale of Modern Family in April 2020.
