Emmy Viewership Falls Under 7 Million For First Time To All-Time Low – Update
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UPDATED, 11:11 AM: The early metrics were not good for the 71st Primetime Emmy Awards and the final numbers are another bludgeoning for TV’s biggest night and Fox, this year’s broadcaster.
Watched by 6.9 million viewers from 8 PM to just after 11 PM ET, the hostless ceremony pulled in the smallest audience for any Emmys ever. That’s smack is a 32% fall in sets of overall eyeballs from the Monday airing of the show on NBC last year, and a 39% drop from the show’s previous Sunday airing on CBS in 2017. In addition, the decline this year from the last time Fox had the Emmys in 2015 is a hard-to-swallow 42%.
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In terms of the key demo of adults 18-49 …well, they’ve tuned out it seems, even with big wins by the much-watched Game of Thrones for its final season. Pulling in a 1.6 rating among the 18-49s, the metric was also an Emmy low.
Forget the Monday broadcast of 2018, but Sunday to Sunday, last night’s Television Academy-led show toppled 36% from 2017 and 56% from the Andy Samberg-hosted night in 2015.
Even with strong social media engagement Sunday, the only word that’s printable this morning is Ouch!
PREVIOUSLY, 5:48 AM: The big winners last night were Games of Thrones, Fleabag and its creator-star Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Chernobyl, Pose’s Billy Porter, Killing Eve’s Jodie Comer and the Los Angeles Rams.
Not so much the 71st Primetime Emmy Awards on Fox.
Back on a Sunday and hence up against the Rams-Cleveland Browns matchup on NBC’s Sunday Night Football, TV’s biggest night had its worst night ever. The 5.7/10 in metered market results for the Emmys is the lowest rating the annual ceremony has achieved in early metrics — coming off successive years of new lows in an age of endangered awards shows.
Unlike the rare ratings rise that the hostless Oscars pulled off this year, the host-free Emmys is down 23% from last year’s Monday evening ceremony – a night that also saw HBO’s GoT take the big Drama prize.
Compared to the last time the TV Academy show was on a Sunday, last night’s Emmys took a hit of just over 30% in metered market ratings from that September 17, 2017 shindig on CBS. That once included a much-criticized appearance by ex-White House Press Secretary and now-Dancing with the Stars contestant Sean Spicer.
Adding to the injury, the 2019 Emmys on Fox fell 34.5% in the first round of ratings from the last time the Emmys were on the Murdoch-owned net back in 2015 with Andy Samberg hosting.
The 70th Primetime Emmy Awards ended up with a then-low of 10.172 million viewers and a 2.4 rating among adults 18-49. The Stephen Colbert-hosted Sunday broadcast 69th Primetime Emmy Awards matched the previous year’s then-all-time low of 11.38 million tuning in and what was then a demo-low a 2.5 rating.
A little bit more perspective on where last night’s Emmys could end up in total audience, and the 18-49 demo might be polished with the 11.9 million sets of eyeballs and 3.6 rating that the ceremony garnered on Fox back in that distant era of 2015.
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As for that sometimes dragging NFL battle last night over on Comcast-owned NBC, the Rams’ 20-13 victory over the hyped but seemingly hapless Browns scored a primetime-winning 12.8/23 in metered market ratings.
Or put another way, last night’s Emmy-facing SNF with Super Bowl losers the Rams was up 5% in the early numbers over the Week 2 game, when the Atlanta Falcons beat the Philadelphia Eagles. Throwing back to the third week of SNF for last season, last night’s game in the Ohio city dipped just under 6% from when the the non-Emmys-facing Detroit Lions beat the New England Patriots 26-10 on September 23, 2018.
We’ll update with more Emmy ratings and Sunday Night Football results, as well as Big Brother on CBS and more later. For now here are Sunday’s preliminary ratings:
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