TV Ratings: 2015 Emmys Fall to All-Time Low 11.9 Million Viewers Against NFL

By Michael O'Connell

The Primetime Emmys were largely expected to go down from last year’s Monday high, and final scores have the three-hour telecast dropping an unkind 24 percent. The Fox telecast averaged just 11.9 million viewers and an overnight 8.7 rating among metered market households in the face of an especially strong Sunday Night Football on NBC.

Final adjusted Nielsen returns for the telecast have it averaging just shy of the previous low audience from 2008. That year the ABC telecast only nabbed 12.2 million viewers.

Football is obviously a big reason for the drop — though recent telecasts (like the highs in 2013) also had to face NBC’s big Sunday night headliner. Knowing that football would be an issue, Fox had tried to stack the cards in its favor by airing the Emmys after its own two NFL games during the day — and plugging the Andy Samberg-host telecast heavily throughout. All previous Emmy ratings lows were for telecasts that did not air with the aid of a football lead-in.

Among the key demo of adults 18-49, the show was down a more forgiving 14 percent to a 3.6 rating in the key demo.

This year’s telecast comes off of a strong showing in 2014 — a 12.1 overnight rating that eventually saw an audience of 15.6 million viewers — when NBC shifted the show to Monday and August to not complicate its SNF schedule. (Last night’s game, the Emmys’ most formidable competition, pulled a 16.3 rating for the network.)

It marks the second year in a row that Emmy numbers have gone down since the nearly decade-high achieved in 2013. That year saw CBS saw the telecast rake in 17.6 million viewers.