Oscar ratings up, but not excellent

As I discussed in a post Thursday, Oscar ceremony ratings hit an all-time low last year. So this year, getting above 32 million viewers didn't seem like a huge challenge.

The challenge I hoped the new producers, along with a Hugh Jackman-hosted ceremony, would meet was the 46.2 million threshold, putting the ceremony in the Top 10 for best rated telecasts. Alas, it was an uphill battle. With no "Dark Knight" Best Picture nominations, viewers and film goers were not happy with the snub.

And the results are...

"Ratings for this year's Academy Awards improved substantially over last year and are the highest for any TV show (sports excluded) in two years," according to Zap2It.com.

ABC says an average of 36.3 million people watched the 81st annual Oscars on Sunday, making it the most-watched entertainment program of the season and bigger than any other entertainment program since the 2007 Oscars' 40.17 million viewers.

The adults 18-49 rating was up, too, rising from 10.7 in 2008 to 12.1 this year. All the other key demos improved too -- even men under 35.

The artilce reminds us that the numbers are based on "time zone-adjusted" fast national ratings that take into account the live nationwide broadcast. What they don't take into account is the last 25 to 30 minutes of the broadcast.

The situation: Nielsen marks the end time of a program as the time of the last national commercial break. For the Oscar telecast, that came at 11:25 p.m. ET Sunday. Unfortunately, the show ended a couple minutes before midnight ET. That last half-hour featured the big awards, where we assume more people watched (I know someone for example who started watched at this point). During this time, Kate Winslet in "The Reader" won the award for best actress, Sean Penn in "Milk" for best actor and "Slumdog Millionaire" for best picture.

"It's not unreasonable to expect there might have been an uptick in viewers," says writer Rick Porter in the article. "We just don't know if that happened based on the figures we have now."

Even if there was an "uptick," the ratings would not have beat my dream of Top 10 ceremonies. This is ratings-wise of course. Sunday's awards were also only the fourth since 1988 to fall short of 40 million viewers (last year, 2006 and 2003 are the others).

The ceremony itself, however, was one of the best I've seen in a long time. Oprah Winfrey agrees with me.

"I've been watching since I was 10 years old, and I think that was the best Academy Awards I have ever seen," Oprah said yesterday on a special edition of her show from the Kodak. "So classy, so respectful."

I'm going through all of the photos and will post some good ones tomorrow.


Ceremony Photo: ©A.M.P.A.S.®

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In Memoriam: Thank you for the journey, Roger Ebert

Image
Each week, my routine was the same. After watching the latest offering from Hollywood on the big screen, I composed my thoughts and analysis and wrote my review. Then, I read what Roger Ebert thought about the movie. This final step was important to me — week in and week out. If Ebert loved a movie I disliked, why was that? He always provided great commentary and gave me reasons to admire a certain film more or dislike it more. He has always been an important validator for me. It’s like we had a conversation about a movie each week. And now I’m on my own. I was devastated to hear about the loss of Ebert. He taught us all about movies and life. The New York Times called him “ A Critic for the Common Man .” He was the consummate writer, journalist, film critic and human being. Ebert just celebrated his 46th year as film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times . I always admired Ebert’s ability to draw on his life experiences when reviewing a film. The first line of his 2011 mem
Read more

Recent Star cuts represent growing trend

Post details: • Kansas City Star announced job cuts • Graphic designer creates Google Map to track cuts On Tuesday’s front page (6/17), the Kansas City Star staffer Dan Margolies wrote the Missouri-based newspaper is cutting 120 jobs (about 10 percent of its work force) – about 20 to 22 positions are expected to be eliminated in the newsroom. “These cuts are part of the way we must respond as we strategically realign our company for success in this digital age,” said Star Publisher Mark Zieman, who also called the move “a painful but necessary step,” in a memo to employees Monday. Zieman cited reductions in revenue because of increased competition and the current economic downturn as reasons for the cut. The Star is “struggling to replace lost print advertising revenue quickly enough with new online revenue,” the article stated. (Having one of the worst designed newspaper Web sites in the country and one that is hard to navigate, I can see why the Star is having problems online.) Oth
Read more

Week one in Chautauqua

Image
Looking out the window of the tour, I thought to myself, "Where am I? What is this place?" That was last Tuesday afternoon, June 16th. Today, I'm still asking that same question to myself - if only to a smaller extent. I am spending the summer as a design editor at the Chautauqua Institution's daily newspaper, the Chautauquan Daily . I'll be here at this utopia-like place until the end of August. That may answer the first question I asked myself, but there's still the second... Trying to describe the Institution is very hard. Over dinner Tuesday night, Institution president Tom Becker gave us a better idea of the place. It's like chocolate in that it's incomparable to anything else, he said. For me, Chautauqua is like many things: a resort, a summer home or lake house, a small college town, Disney World and, in a sense, Monaco. On Monday, resident archivist and historian Jon Schmitz stopped by the newsroom and helped describe the Institution anecdo
Read more