5 Most-Watched & 5 Least-Watched Oscar Broadcasts of the Last 50 Years
The Oscar statuettes gleam as brightly as ever, but the Oscar brand feels a little tarnished these days. Ratings for the Academy Awards have plummeted recently, with Hollywood’s biggest night getting half the audience that it did just a decade ago.
In fact, the ratings situation has been so dire that ABC threatened to cancel the Oscars telecast last year unless the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences dropped 12 categories from the hours-long awards show, according to The Hollywood Reporter. (In the end, the Academy’s decision to pre-tape certain categories satisfied the network, the publication adds.)
So why aren’t people tuning in? The Boston Globe attributes the Oscars ratings decline to a variety of factors, including the peak-television options that have reduced network-TV viewership across the board, the social media that have made both Hollywood stars and Oscar highlights more accessible, and the relative niche-ness of the Best Picture nominees. (This year, box-office sensations Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick are up for Best Picture, though Everything Everywhere All at Once feels like a lock for that top prize.)
While we wait to see what audience the 95th Academy Awards commands, here are the most- and least-watched broadcasts of the last half-century (with TV by the Numbers providing ratings information from 1974 to 2011 and Variety providing the stats since 2012).
95th Academy Awards, Sunday, March 12, 8/7c, ABC
#1: 1973, 85.0 million
Cabaret and The Godfather were the big winners at the 45th Academy Awards, though Godfather star Marlon Brando rejected his Best Actor trophy in absentia, with representative Sacheen Littlefeather explaining that Brando was protesting “the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry.” (Yes, 85 million feels apocryphally high, but both The Hollywood Reporter and The Washington Post cite that figure.)
#2: 1998, 55.2 million
Oscar viewers’ hearts will go on and on: Titanic took home 11 Oscars at the 70th Academy Awards, tying Ben-Hur’s record for the film with the highest Oscar tally. (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King would make it a three-way tie in 2004.)
#3: 1983, 53.2 million
Louis Gossett Jr. broke ground at the 55th Academy Awards, becoming the first Black actor to win Best Supporting Actor when he took the trophy for An Officer and a Gentleman. The big winner of the night, though, was the biopic film Gandhi, which earned eight Oscars.
#4: 1980, 49.0 million
At the 52nd Academy Awards, the awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actress all went to the same film: the legal drama Kramer vs. Kramer. And that Best Supporting Actress win gave Meryl Streep, who now has 21 Academy Award nominations to her name, her first Oscar.
#5: 1978, 48.5 million
As Oscar turned 50 with a ceremony at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (seen here on the evening of the big night), the space epic then called Star Wars led the pack with six wins and one special Oscar. Most of those wins were in technical categories, though: The film missed out on wins in the Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay categories.
#46: 2019, 29.6 million
Months after the Academy put its plans for a “Best Popular Film” award on the back burner, the 91st Oscars garnered the awards show’s second-lowest audience. This was also the same Oscars for which the Academy announced (and eventually reversed) plans to shorten the show by cutting the number of categories broadcast live and the number of Best Original Song performances.
#47: 2018, 26.5 million
One year after the infamous Moonlight/La La Land mixup, the Oscars hit what was then a record low for the awards show with the 90th Academy Awards. Producers tempted fate by having Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway announce Best Picture again, but this time, the former costars got it right and announced The Shape of Water as Best Picture.
#48: 2020, 23.6 million
#49: 2022, 16.6 million
In an improvement over the prior year’s ratings but still a dismal tally for the Oscars, just over 16 million people were watching when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the 94th Academy Awards… and then won Best Actor for King Richard. Meanwhile, Oscars producers moved multiple categories to a pre-show, sparking backlash among film industry professionals, some of whom wrote in an open letter to the Academy that the change would “relegate [those nominees] to the status of second-class citizens.”
#50: 2021, 10.5 million
Oscars producers moved heaven and Earth — and the awards show itself — to create a socially-distanced ceremony at Los Angeles’ Union Station in the thick of COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, the 93rd Academy Awards was a hit with neither critics nor viewers. “The Oscars were a train wreck at the train station, an excruciatingly long, boring telecast that lacked the verve of so many movies we love,” observed USA Today.
