Oscars 2020 ceremony hits all-time low in ratings as it registers viewership drop of 6 million from last year
Guess Billy Eilish's cringe, Idina Menzel's shock and Martin Scorsese's little snooze at the Oscars weren't the only disapproval this year's Academy Awards got as the 92nd ceremony of its kind saw a total of 23.6 million viewers tuning in to watch the live airing on the ABC network and despite these big numbers, it's still a solid six million lesser than last year's viewer count.
And if you thought that was disappointing, the ceremony also drew in 5.3 ratings among adults in the 18-49 demographic, as revealed by The Hollywood Reporter. Why it matters? Because last year's 29.56 million viewers had given the equally hostless ceremony a 7.7 rating.
This year, the 2020 Oscars was the first time that producers Stephanie Allain and Lynette Howell Taylor took charge of the show and ahead of the event, they had shared at a press conference that they would just have to 'roll with whatever' came their way and that they did want to appeal to 'a global audience'. "Lynette and I have always embraced diversity and inclusion in our work and we already had planned before the nominations were announced to celebrate that, so I think you’ll see that in the presenters and performers," Allain said at a press conference last week.
The two had also claimed that they wanted people to be 'surprised' and clearly there was a neverending supply of that at the 92nd Academy Awards, with Eminem breaking down into a 2002 song for a reason unknown to many and much to Scorsese's utter shock and disinterest, while many in the audience were pleased to see the Rap God return to the stage, with our very own Captain Marvel headbanging to Slim Shady belting out his number one hit from the early days of '8 Mile'.
For the show's producers, however, the biggest feat accomplished was keeping the whole performance under wraps - something they were admittedly glad to have succeeded at. "So we reached out [to Eminem] to see if that was something he might want to be involved in. He said yes. We’ve been holding onto it for a while. It was nice that we surprised people — we don’t usually get to surprise anybody in this day and age," she said.
Taylor herself is not quite political on Twitter, but the social media platform's biggest problem with this year's ceremony is how 'woke ' it is. The producer tweets about issues such as promoting women in film, and her work and kids. Allain's Twitter is proudly 'woke' and liberal, with pro-choice memes, quotes, and shared photos from women's marches in the past.