SAD: Kimmel Blames Netflix For The Oscars Ratings Collapse

Rather than blame himself for choosing to play the role of an unfunny partisan hack at the Oscars instead of the role of comedic host, Jimmy Kimmel now says that Netflix and streaming services are responsible for Sunday night’s show being the lowest rated Oscars in history.

Kimmel’s refusal to accept the blame for his show’s failure comes in response to President Trump trolling of him for it.

In response to that on Tuesday, Kimmel spewed some fake news:

According to the polls, the president stands at close to 50% approval, which is far from the “lowest rated President in history.” True, there have been points in Trump’s presidency where he stood lower than his predecessors, but like all American presidents, his approval rating fluctuates, and will until he leaves office.

Unfortunately for Kimmel, no such fluctuation exists in his own “approval rating.” Until another comedian comes along to double-down on Kimmel’s legacy, Oscars 2018 will go down as the lowest-rated show in history.

Kimmel, however, will just not accept that fact and has now resorted to some sad defenses. On his show Tuesday night, he blamed Netflix and the overall drop in ratings for basic cable television programs across the board for his loss.

“Trump loves saying the ratings are down as if to insinuate that’s some sort of show of support for him, but the truth is, every year since Netflix happened, the ratings for every big TV show are down — Super Bowl, Grammys, Emmys, Golden Globes,” Kimmel said. “But Trump thinks he caused the ratings to go down.”

True, ratings are down across the board for big television events, with the Super Bowl being down 7% last year and the Grammys being down 24% from 2017. However, that ratings drop coincides with overall loss in public goodwill on behalf of those institutions.

Forget that excuse, though. Kimmel says that Netflix took the ratings away from his political sermonizing on Sunday night. None of that is true, of course. Prior to the streaming revolution, the lowest-rated Oscars occurred in 2008 (31.6 million viewers). In 2014, the year Ellen DeGeneres hosted, the Oscars actually saw an uptick in viewership (43.7 million), just as streaming truly began to take off.

Kimmel’s show could not even match the lowest ratings in 2008 or the second-lowest in 2017. No, Kimmel set a new record-low by pulling in a meager 26.5 million viewers, a full 20% drop from last year.

And, not only does Kimmel blame his failure on a phantom menace, he is also collecting victories in the pettiest of areas.

“Since I was the host of the Oscars, I felt like it was incumbent on me to respond [to Trump],” Kimmel told his audience. “So I tweeted to him … [and] wanted to point out that my tweet got more than twice as many ‘likes’ as his tweet.”