The Emmy ratings tanked for a second year, with the annual awards show suffering its worst performance ever — just 4.46 million viewers tuned in for Monday night’s show.
Broadcast on Fox, the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards show continued its decline in viewers following the decision to postpone it from its usual spot in September due to the ongoing writers’ and actors’ strikes in Hollywood at the time, the Hollywood Reporter reported.
The telecast brought in 4.46 million viewers — which was down from the previous low set in 2022 when the annual awards show got 5.9 million viewers, the outlet noted.
The awards show was also down in the coveted age demographic of 18-49, with a .87 rating compared to the 1.09 it got in 2022, THR noted.
Emmy Awards get record low ratings with audience of 4.3 million people https://t.co/6SCr4jVdbw
— The Associated Press (@AP) January 16, 2024
Besides the months-long delay for the show honoring the best of TV, the awards had to compete with a busy broadcast night. It aired directly across from the NFC Wild Card playoffs game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Tampa Bay Buccaneers that was shown on ABC and ESPN. It also fell on the same night of the Iowa caucuses and coverage of those results across the cable news channels, THR noted.
To put the 4.46 million viewership into context, the Buccaneers blowout against the Eagles garnered 28 million viewers, and the political news coverage another 4.7 million who tuned in to Fox News, MSNBC and CNN during the same broadcast time as the awards show to catch the returns, The New York Times noted.
Other awards shows have suffered similar drops since the pandemic, but as of late have seen a rebound. The Golden Globes — which had seen declining numbers for several years — experienced its first spike in the ratings game since 2020, with the most recent awards show scoring a 50 percent jump in viewership over last year’s dismal ratings.
With a move to the CBS network and a lead-in from the NFL, the 2024 Golden Globes averaged 9.4 million viewers, based on time zone-adjusted fast national ratings from Nielsen, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The 2024 broadcast showed a healthy jump from the 6.25 million viewers who watched last year on NBC, marking the second-smallest audience in the network’s 28 years of broadcasting the awards show.
The 2024 Emmys are already set to take place later this year when it will be broadcast in September on ABC, the Times noted.