The pandemic has changed TV viewing patterns, and awards show below

The pandemic has changed TV viewing patterns, and awards show below

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Think about it. How have your own TV habits changed over the past year? What do you watch more, less, and how? The answers help a lot in explaining the record-low ratings for awards, especially Sunday’s Grammys on CBS. The television broadcast on Sunday had an average of a record low 8.8 million viewers, writes Gary Levin of USA Today. “That’s 53% lower than 18.7 million for last year’s broadcast on January 26,” before the pandemic.

According to CBS, the Grammys are still the “biggest audience for an awards show this season”, but that’s because the Emmy Awards in September totaled just 6.1 million and the Golden Globes averaged just 6.9 million last month. So let’s unpack the reasons for this …

The Grammys fall freely in the ratings despite a broadcast praising critics for its ingenuity and energy. But where some saw a well-produced event, others saw a desperate appeal to the youth that was unsuitable for the older demos of TV broadcasts. The problem with the bigger picture is that a huge fragmentation is going on – a loss of shared experiences, whether in the movies or in the broadcast or, to some extent, in music.

Here’s Brian Lowry with the analysis: “The effects of Covid-19 – and the impact on these live events – have accelerated a number of problems. One of the obvious issues in the industry is fragmentation. Without the red carpet fashion and the unpredictability of live acceptance speeches in front of large audiences, why not just wait and watch the tracks of anything interesting that happens next? ‘

Lowry adds: “Even the Super Bowl was not completely immune to these forces, which makes me wonder: to what extent is this big deduction not a one-time blip, but the new normal? As the latter, license fees for award show dramatically is out of order, and it will have a ripple effect on the organizations behind them, which rely on TV revenue. “

Why does it matter?

Expanding on Lowry’s point: ‘While the decline of some self-congratulatory Hollywood galas may seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, especially during a pandemic, these shows employ thousands of workers, and the groups they use, use the profits to fund programs for the arts, ”wrote Lucas Shaw, Bloomberg. “TV networks pay tens of millions of dollars for the rights to broadcast individual awards, because it’s part of an exclusive club: programming that must be watched live. In any given year, the Oscars and Grammys are the only programs that can compete with live sports for viewers. ‘

Speaking of the Oscars …

Lisa Respers France writes: “The Oscar nominations were announced Monday morning and it was a great day for diversity. Seventy women received a total of 76 nominations, a record for a given year. Two women, Emerald Fennell and Chloé Zhao, are nominated for the first time in the directing category in the same year. Zhao is the first woman of color to be nominated in the category. “

>> Filmmakers love movies about movies, and ‘Mank’ from Netflix about making the screenplay “Citizen Kane” led the pack with ten nods …

>> It’s also striking from Lisa’s story: “Three Black men, Leslie Odom Jr. for ‘One Night in Miami’ and Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield for ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’, were all nominated in the category of best actor .. “

Reduced expectations for Oscar ratings

Brian Lowry writes: “The Grammys ratings hit a few hours after the Oscars nods rolled out. As the NYT’s Brooks Barnes tweeted, the Oscars would send off like the Grammys and Globes, ABC would tell an audience of about 10 million could watch., ‘an unimaginable number as recently as a few years ago. My advice to the Oscar producers and ABC is for the time being to accept less expectations, and in a year when streaming is the most important means to deliver content – Netflix’s record 35 nominations testify — go with the flow, hoping for the best. ‘

Read Lowry’s full column here …

These trends stretch back ten years

In so many parts of American life, the pandemic is accelerating trends that already exist. In TV, “the pandemic accelerated the exodus from linear,” guru Joe Adalian of Vulture’s reviews wrote Monday. As the CEO of CBS, special presentations and live events, told the LA Times before the program to the Times: “The awards program harms the way most linear broadcast television has hurt.” In the same piece, Grammys producer Ben Winston acknowledged the writing on the wall and predicted a 30 to 60% drop.

So let’s zoom out. Think about how much has changed over the last ten years: the growth of on-demand content libraries, the use of ad-free viewers, the ubiquity of celebrities on social media, the ability to later capture the best parts of live events, the toughness of always social feeds. One of the logical results: star-studded events are no longer a must-see TV. As one wise TV executive told me: ‘Awards awards rely on a general definition of pop culture and the idea has been getting worse for years.’

However, Oprah Winfrey’s recent interview is a compelling counter-argument. Interest in the Meghan and Harry interview was linked to royal drama and curiosity about what she would say …

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