Oscars Audience Up To 19.69 Million After Disney Adds Mobile & PC Viewing
UPDATED: The 97th Oscars is up to 19.69 million viewers across ABC and Hulu after accounting for mobile and PC viewing, Disney said Tuesday.
That’s up quite significantly from the 18.07M viewers Disney reported Monday, and it does boost the show slightly above last year’s four-year audience high of 19.5M viewers. PC and mobile viewing is always accounted for in Nielsen’s final reporting, though it’s not usually this large of a discrepancy.
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Disney offered the Oscars on streaming for the first time this year via Hulu, which is where much of this viewership came from. It’s a pretty big win for Hulu because it showcases (much like Tubi viewership for the Super Bowl) that audiences are responding positively to live events on streaming.
However, while this year’s Oscar number is slightly higher than 2024, making it a five-year audience high, it’s not quite the boost that might have been expected by adding a streaming component for the first time, since the show only added about 169,000 viewers year-over-year. It’s hard to say whether the show lost linear viewers completely and added a significant number via streaming, or if linear viewers of the past switched to Hulu this year. It’s likely a combination of both.
Oscars viewership has been on a steady incline, rising heftily from the hostless 2021 Oscars, which drew an audience of 10.4 million. About 18.8M tuned in for the 95th annual Academy Awards in 2023. In 2022, the year of the Slap Seen Around the World when subsequent Best Actor winner Will Smith took a whack at presenter Chris Rock, viewership leapt up to 16.6M.
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Who’s to say how Sunday’s audience was impacted by the multiple technical glitches Hulu viewers experienced throughout the night. The issues started early on, with reports that some users couldn’t access their accounts when the show began. Others say they were kicked out of the broadcast before the last two categories were announced.
There’s also the sheer length of the show. At 3 hours and 47 minutes, it was one of the longer Oscars on record — but not the longest, by far, as some ceremonies have lasted well over four hours. Longer shows can be a harder sell in keep audiences engaged.
However, like last year, the Academy opted for an earlier start time this year, kicking off the ceremony at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT, meaning the show stayed largely in primetime. That has certainly helped retain some of the audience who might have tapped out in previous years, when it was quite common for the Oscars telecast to go past 11 p.m. ET.
This year’s Oscars audience is pretty on par with other award shows recently, suggesting these ceremonies might be settling into a new normal after all of them saw viewership tank in 2020. The Grammys were down 9% this year, while the Golden Globes were basically the same year-over-year. The Emmys were a different story, up 60% year-over-year, but that audience likely took a hit at least in part because the 2023 ceremony was delayed several months due to the Hollywood strikes.
The 97th Oscars saw Sean Baker set a record by winning four Oscars in the same night for the same movie. His Anora took home Best Picture, and Baker also claimed awards for Director, Film Editing and Original Screenplay. Mikey Madison scored the Neon film another win for Lead Actress. Adrien Brody took Best Actor for A24’s The Brutalist, 22 years after his win for The Pianist, and Zoe Salda?a of Emilia Pérez and Kieran Culkin of A Real Pain surprised few with their respective wins for Best Supporting Actress and Actor.
See the full list of winners here, and check out Deadline’s review of the Conan O’Brien-hosted telecast here.
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