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UPDATED: Nielsen’s national ratings have come in, and the 81st Annual Academy Awards on ABC averaged 36.3 million viewers with a 12.1 rating among adults 18-49 on Sunday. It increased viewership by 13% by total audience over last year when both slumped to a record low. But this was still the third least viewed Oscar telecasts on record.
In a 2009 to 2008 comparison, the Oscars built its ratings and reach by 4.3 million viewers (36.3 vs. 32.0 million), 13% among adults 18-49 (12.1 vs. 10.7) and as high as 22% among men 18-34 (8.9 vs. 7.3). So Oscars producers Larry Mark and Bill Condon, as well as host Hugh Jackman, and director Roger Goodman, and designer David Rockwell, did AMPAS proud by at least reversing the recent downward ratings and viewership spiral.
Earlier today, Nielsen’s overnight metered market ratings showed a 6% ratings jump in the 50 or so biggest U.S. markets over 2008. New York delivered the largest rating Sunday (34.1/49 share), followed by Chicago (31.2/46) and Los Angeles (28.1/44). For the night, ABC beat the combined household delivery of CBS, NBC and Fox by roughly 30%.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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I wonder if the pull was Hugh Jackman?
There were some painful snafus in direction and camera work, but also a lot to like about the new production.
Loved Hugh Jackman – entertaining, handsome and likeable. Hope he returns next year!!!
Unlike a lot of people, I loved seeing 5 previous winners handing out the Oscar to the new member. Lots of rich tradition and sentiment.
Loved the absence of lengthy clips.
Loved Queen Latifah’s tribute – would have liked to have seen the names planted on the bottom of the screen in a uniform manner.
Loved Anne Hathaway singing with Hugh Jackman – who knew?
Many thanks to Jerry Lewis for keeping his remarks mercifully short. I wish Kate Winslet showed some of her talent in her acceptance speeches – with all the practice she’s had this year, you’d think she would have figured out a better way to say thank you.
The only thing I didn’t love was Sean Penn winning. I would have loved to have seen Mickey Rourke win. But the production of the Oscar telecast was an infinite improvement all the way around.
Why these shows can’t be produced without always offending a majority of Americans is the real puzzle:
First, the guy who won for Best Original Screenplay whining about being marginalized and repressed while accepting an Oscar? puh-leaze.
Then, Bill Maher insulting all persons of faith.
Finally, Sean Penn telling those who believe in traditional marriage that they are full of ‘hate’ and will be ‘ashamed’ in front of their grandchildren. Nobody wants to hear this stupidity.
These radicals should be adult enough to appear on an award show without slandering whomever they dislike. It didn’t use to be this way.
Oscar sucked worse yesterday than it has ever sucked. I can’t imagine why America would bother turning into this narcissistic industry celebration that is so divorced from and less relevant to the lives of regular Americans, now more than ever. Hollywood, you can all go F yourselves, and you can take your shitty Oscar telecast with you. The day Oscar dies will be a grand one for the Republic.
midnightexploder don’t blame Hollywood for your own failures in life. Hollywood pumps billions into the economy and creates of millions of jobs, what do you do ?
great show. minor nitpicks. but proof is in the ratings. kudos to the producer and kudos to nikke (somewhat) for recognizing.
The yearly Oscarcast is like the description of Dr. Samuel Johnson’s dog walking on its hind legs: the marvel is not whether he does it well, but that he does it at all. It’s mind-boggling that an industry that produces easily a thousand hours of movies a year can’t get its act together for a three-hour annual TV show. That’s the challenge that Mark and Condon had to face, and they handled it with elan. I didn’t learn, until after the program was over, that I wasn’t supposed to have liked it. The Oscars are a trade show that the public is allowed to see, and the telecast raises money that the Academy uses to continue its archival, restoration, and educational job throughout the rest of the year (a far cry from the Academy’s original purpose as a union-busting organization contrived into existence by Louis B. Mayer). What the 81st Oscars unwittingly demonstrated was the greatness of established stars (Loren, DeNiro, MacLaine, Saint, Hopkins, etc.) and the generic nature of the young stars (Pattinson, Efron, Cyrus, etc.) who are being groomed for the future. Hey, you make a meal out of whatever ingredients you have, and I think that Mark and Condon and their team did it damn well.
The main draw is going to be the movies themselves. How can you get high ratings when the vast majority of this country hasn’t seen most of the nominated movies?? I’d only seen 2 (just a regular, non-industry person), and they did well (Slumdog and Button). I have no interest in the others. I haven’t watched the Oscars since the whole Lord of the Rings sweep, but I watched last night to see how Jackman would do. He kept me entertained pretty well. And the main reason why people tune out as time goes by is awards for things like Best Art Direction, Best Documentary, etc…the vast majority of people do NOT care about theses awards and they go to bed or turn the channel. Face it, Americans didn’t truly care that much who won the major awards last night, either…until you get movies nominated that the general public loves, you won’t get their attention.
It’s hard to change a tired old horse of a show and Condon, Mark and Jackman did a great job! I didn’t miss the clips. Nikki, did you not see any of the films? Why the repeated demand for clips? Very classy and entertaining show! Looked like everyone there (esp Jackman) had a great time as well. Most painful shot: Baz Luhrmann after the musical number.
If this awards show is going to survive into the 21st century the disconnected are going to have be a play movie audience to understand thier demographics. And they should be asking themselves the why question,on how come we lost our viewers. It’s clear this show needs a radical overhaul,if it means getting fresh eyes on this one.
while unimpressed, underwealmed and bored silly by the Oscars last night, i am happy the ratings went up. in general and as a country, we need signs of improvement in comparison to last year… even if it is just the silly oscars!
meanwhile, i am concerned by how extremely negative, angry and borderline violent some of the posts to the live blogging were last night. the level of anger, envy and ill wishes were disturbing. i wish success for hollywood, wall street and even the overly paid investment bankers because success for them is success for the rest of us too (I am in the midwest but used to work in the film biz in LA). congrats hollywood and hope this whole SAG thing is worked out soon too, no one needs more unemployment…
From: Mean Girl
To: Nikki
Re: MY OSCAR MEAN TOP 10
10. Beyonce’s thighs are bigger than the kid cast of “Slumdog.”
9. Sean Penn wins for playing gay but Mickey Rourke got screwed by a guy named Oscar
8. Kate Winslet was so annoying, that you wanted get her a date with Chris Brown.
7. Cuba Gooding Jr. was as funny as his post-Oscar career.
6. Judd Apatow, Seth Rogan, Jack Black and Ben Stiller walk into a bar– and I kill them for not being funny.
5. Jerry Lewis is a sad, bitter piece of shit. At least Dean had the courtesy to die before we started to hate him.
4. If you get beaten by a corpse, shouldn’t you just kill yourself?
3. I can’t look at Eddie Murphy without thinking of him picking up Tyler Perry in Drag and looking at his feet.
2. If Brangelina is Hollywood’s “it couple” and Hollywood is shit, doesn’t that make them a sphincter? (Note to Brad, a sphincter is not the big thingy in Egypt)
1. Hugh Jackman was so gay in those numbers, I thought he’d go “Wolverine” and his hands would shoot out penises instead of knives.
Lets not kid ourselves. The only reason the ratings were up was because of the morbid curiosity concerning Heath Ledger winning the Oscar. If not for that…new lows would have been reached.
No, it’s really easy to understand Nikki.
That 13% increase reflects the true unemployment rate. So more folks are home watching TV because they have no money to do anything else…
I jest a bit, but I think there is probably some truth to it as well.
I turned the show off halfway through – and I’ve never done that before! Instead of showing clips of the nominated actors and films, they showed talking heads – a lot of them – TELL US how good the actors and films are.
Instead of highlighting the music from the films nominated, they had a big cringe-worthy production number about old musicals. WTF? With top hats, no less. Are we back in 1965? Why didn’t they do a Bollywood number? Or a Batman/Iron Man number?
Why didn’t they celebrate how international the Hollywood industry is becoming? Why didn’t they look forward to the future, instead of looking backward?
It was just really awful.
One high point was the film mini-montages for the best picture award — each nominated film was connected thematically to past winners and nominated films. I don’t know who did this (Spielberg?) but it was a very worthy successor to the Chuck Workman montages.
The in memoriam segment was a disaster, terribly produced and directed, with the camera constantly moving — as commenters have noted.
Also, during the art direction/editing/makeup/ cinematography awards, the orchestra was playing contempo-Muzak-type background music(!), even during the clips — totally inappropriate and distracting. Another small but terrible producing decision.
I read the blog while watching the show and wondered if we were seeing the same program…at least in the first 30 minutes. The set was remarkable and simply beautiful, at least most of the time. Could have toned it down during the production numbers and let the cast do their jobs. Agree with all the comments about the sporadic camera work. Loved the Queen Latifah number; some things are just elegant and evocative even if not cutting edge. If Brody had taken the time to learn his speech prior to insulting the nominee by having to clumsily resort to the teleprompter, I would have liked that as well. And never mind the face lifts – can’t someone do something with that man’s hair?? He always looks liked he just crawled out of bed after napping with his dog. And Sophia! Honey, the time for the hand on the hip passed 30 years ago. Other than that, liked it more than most shows.
I hate, Hate, HATED the show. i thought it was a complete clown show. Very little about it i like.
It could be i’m in an awkward demographic…I’m over 27 under 35.
As a starting point…i hated Jackman as the host. To give context, in the past few yrs I like Chris Rock the most, then liked Ellen, then liked Jon Stewart.
To echo Nikki:
WHERE WERE THE FILM CLIPS.
I really hated the star chamber approach to the nominations. I loved Anne Hathway in Rachel Getting Married. I hated Shirley McLaine emoting about how much she like Hathway’s performance.
I hated the stupid dance pieces. If they want to devote time blocks to song/dance..they should bring back the dance numbers for the original songs..yeah, those kinda sucked…but so did Beyonce, and so did ppl from High School Musical and Mamma Mia.
SavvyDude,
You write: “First, the guy who won for Best Original Screenplay whining about being marginalized and repressed while accepting an Oscar? puh-leaze.”
If you listened to his incredibly moving speech he was saying how as a gay youth growing up in the Mormon community he felt marginalized and repressed and how the efforts of Harvey Milk gave him hope for a better future. Do you really feel that because this one guy won an award all bigotry towards homosexuals has gone away in the USA?
Saying that all people regardless of their sexuality are loved by God, which is what he said, was according to you offensive to a majority of Americans?
Wow. What America do you live in? It sounds like its from the 1950s.
I can totally agree with you that Bill Maher is a blowhard and Sean Penn didn’t have to go to a holier-than-thou place with his speech and could’ve called for equality without that last sanctimonious part. I did enjoy him making fun of himself though — at least there’s some self-awareness that he’s a pain in the ass.
Now Sean Penn really blew it with his best actor speech. To come out and call the rest of America intolerant is stupid. And to humilate actress Jennifer Anniston? That was unprofessional as well. She didn’t deserve it in my opioin.
The Academy should return the show to March — does anyone else here agree? If so, please email them at oscar.com. Here are some of the reasons:
1. Academy voters are forced to hand in their nominations after New years. Do you think they have time to watch all the movies in contention and then decide after the holidays?
2. They insist on voting for smaller movies that have not played in middle america. Before you could start to build word of mouth and slowly roll out a movie — but now they are forced to go wide and not many people have heard of the movies and it gives us viewers only a month to see the movies. You’re actually lucky if they keep the movies for more than one week. If more people saw the movies that they choose to nominate, more people would be interested in the ceremony.
3. If its in March, there’s a greater chance of upsets and suspense. the last time the show was in March — the pianist shocked by getting director, actor and almost took best picture away from chicago. If they want to say that that was the lowest rated show — it was because we just went to war the day before.
4. Voters need time to see the films as well as audience members.
5. they have created this logjam of awards shows — where every week there is an awards show. Instead of making the Oscars special, they have made it just another awards show with the same winners.
6. They have compromised the integrity of the awards by rushing through the process.
7. In addition, has anyone thought of moving the show earlier like the superbowl — which is on at 6. The oscars get higher ratings early on.
Anyway, please if you agree with any of these statements, please email the Academy. They don’t realize what they are doing to the ratings and the longevity of the Oscars.
Anyone who thought that Chris Rock was the best host is insane. He was rude, arrogant and just not the right fit for this show. Jon Stewart is really the best for me, followed by Billy Crystal.
The Nielsen ratings system is so antiquated and useless. I watched the Oscars at a friend’s house with almost 20 people. How that is quantified? It’s not. Everybody I know was watching them, even my mother who had seen none of the movies and now wants me to take her to see ‘Slumdog.’
Excellent Show for once. Watched with half a dozen others who all felt likewise. The set was stunning and versatile. The acting category tributes were classy and touching. The grouping of technical awards made sense, were creativey and interestingly done, and moved the procedings along more swiftly than in the past. The initmiate feeling of the stage as well as the audience configuration worked for the show. The edited salute to films was excellent and enjoyable and inclusive. They truly celebrated all genres of film from ’08 and felt like they actually put some thought into, even carefully selecting appropriate music for each section. And seeing clips of upcoming movies for ’09 was a fantastic way to say, “Until next year, here’s some upcoming movies you may want to check out”. As likable and talented as Hugh Jackman is, for once the low point was the host, that’s how good the show was. Next year, let Steve Martin and Tina Fey host. And critics – shut up! – you guys are so out of touch and sound like a bunch of bitter-want-to-be-never-were writers, directors, and producers.
For Oscar 2010, here’s an idea for host: Robert Downey, Jr. He’s smart, funny, self-effacing and he knows the ins and outs of the movie biz. Plus, his career is hot and maybe the 20-somethings who love ‘Iron Man’ would tune in for once.
Just a thought in a quest to save the show from obscurity.