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as Oscar nights go
Sets ratings low as well as length--4 hrs, 13 mins.
If this keeps up the Super Bowl for women may someday be carried off the field on a stretcher.
Well, perhaps we exaggerate, and mightily so.
Sunday's Academy Award show on ABC will still go down as one of the top TV shows of the year, fifth behind The Super Bowl, a pre-game bowl show, and two Olympics nights, the opening ceremonies and figure skating finals.
Yet the 74th annual Academy Awards made history by drawing the lowest rating ever for an Oscar night.
More worrisome, the slide fits into a trend over recent years of declining ratings.
The show scored a 25.4 rating/42 share in households rating, handily beating out last year's record low of 26.2/40, according to preliminary numbers from Nielsen.
Viewership was also down from last year by almost 3 percent, to 41.8 million from 42.9 million.
To put things into historical perspective, the Academy Award's very best year was in 1954, when NBC drew a 55.0 rating/82 share household average. The winning picture was "On the Waterfront," and it was only the second year that the awards were broadcast on television.
But that was when American had but three TV networks, no cable, no internet, and movie-going was then the country's favorite leisure pastime, ahead of even TV-watching.
Sunday night's airing was special in several regards, and certainly one is for the attention that has gone to the wins for Denzel Washington and Halle Berry, her best actress win an Oscar first for an African-American and Denzel's for best actor only the second for a black thesp.
It was also historic in its length, going some four hours and 21 minutes, 13 minutes longer than the record-holder that was the 2000 presentation, and not ending until 12:45 a.m. Eastern time.
And its length may have hurt its ratings the most, diluting what audience the awards did draw, as viewers began dropping out in droves as the hours piled on yet one special award after another, with Hollywood's will to self-congratulate winning out over the sleep needs of the great swell of average Americans.
The broadcast drew only a 23.7 rating for the last 23 minutes.
But the low ratings also testify to the taste of American moviegoers.
Though critically acclaimed, the winner for best picture, "A Beautiful Mind," focuses on mental illness, a subject matter that seldom pops up among winning Oscars and certainly not one that could be expected to draw in huge numbers of viewers.
Also working against a huge viewership was the generally irritating nature of its star, Russell Crowe, who was expected by many to win best actor, and the negative buzz about the movie in the weeks leading up to the awards, with talk that the real-life character played by Crowe suffered not only from mental illness but also from a number of flaws of character shared by the fully sane.
Viewers of Academy Award ceremonies tend to prefer more mainstream subject, such as love, honor and heroics, with lots of positive buzz leading up to Oscar night.
When in 1998 the very popular "Titanic" was expected to win best picture, the ratings zoomed to a 34.9/63.
The prior year, by contrast, the critically acclaimed but obscure "English Patient" scored a modest a 27.4/51.
Last year’s telecast, in which "Gladiator" won, was the lowest-rated on record, delivering a 26.2 household rating and 40 share of audience, off 10 percent from the 29.2/49 of a year earlier.
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Recent Ratings Trends for the Academy Awards |
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| Year | Best Picture | HH Rtg. /Sh |
A18-34 | A18-49 | A25-54 | A50+ |
| 1996 | Braveheart | 30.3/55 | 17.2 | 18.6 | 20.6 | 26.8 |
| 1997 | English Patient | 27.4/51 | 15.3 | 16.5 | 18.2 | 23.7 |
| 1998 | Titanic | 34.9/63 | 23.2 | 24.2 | 25.7 | 26.5 |
| 1999 | Shakespeare in Love | 28.6/48 | 16.2 | 18.8 | 21.0 | 25.1 |
| 2000 | American Beauty | 29.2/49 | 16.5 | 19.1 | 21.1 | 25.1 |
| 2001 | Gladiator | 26.2/40 | 16.2 | 17.8 | 19.4 | 22.5 |
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Source: Nielsen Media Research |
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March 26, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
