The awards are on life support.
Viewers for Sunday’s 63rd annual Grammy Awards dropped 53 percent from last year to 8.8 million viewers, CBS said Monday. The record-breaking performance comes on the heels of the gloomy decline of the Golden Globes by 60 percent to 6.9 million viewers.
Although this year’s disaster is at least partly due to the pandemic, television executives and insiders in the industry said it also reflects an acceleration in the prolonged declines that hit the awards specifically and linear television.
While most observers expect higher audiences for future awards ceremonies, many people question whether the performances will ever be able to maintain the number of the pre-pandemic.
The decrease in ratings can also be attributed in part to the quality of the performances themselves. On average, more than 10 million people watch “The Masked Singer”, a show on Fox where lesser celebrities are hidden behind masks. The Grammys, with big celebrities that can be seen, now draw a smaller audience.
The appalling numbers have sounded alarm bells for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science (which awards the Oscars) and ABC, which will host the event on April 25 this year. The program will present the challenge of celebrating the film in a year, the vast majority of productions being discontinued and most theaters closed.
The previous Grammys ceremony, which took place in January 2020, attracted 18.7 million viewers. This was a decrease of 19.9 million the previous year and a peak of 39.9 million in 2012. (Before Sunday’s performance, the lowest turnout was 17 million in 2006).
The 8.8 million that tuned in to the Grammys this year included viewers who watched the linear broadcast, as well as those who streamed it live via CBS.com, the CBS app or Paramount +, the new streaming app of the company.
