Topline
The Tony Awards, which celebrates the achievements of the biggest Broadway shows, hit an all-time low television viewership of 2.62 million viewers this year, according to Nielsen, tumbling down further from its previous record low two years ago, and bucking a brief trend (including the Emmy awards a week ago) where TV ratings seemed to be on the rebound.
Key Facts
The 74th Tony Awards declined 51% in viewership from its previous show in 2019, which drew 5.4 million viewers, although it had to face stiff competition airing in September instead of its usual June spot and was delayed by NFL show overruns on CBS.
The show faced off against NBC’s Sunday Night Football, which aired a nail-biting match between the Green Bay Packers and San Francisco 49ers and captured an estimated 13.6 million viewers, and show premieres from ABC and Fox, including Supermarket Sweep and The Simpsons.
The viewership totals were a far cry from the 70th Tony Awards show, which aired in 2016 and garnered a recent record-high of 8.7 million viewers, spurred by the release of Broadway hit Hamilton.
In a first for the award show, the 74th Annual Tony Awards was split into two presentations, with the live awards presentation airing on Paramount Plus and a live special filled with performances from reopened Broadway shows, called The Tony Awards Present: Broadway’s Back!, airing concurrently on the streaming platform and on CBS.
Notable winners of the night included 2019 shows, Moulin Rouge!, which took home ten awards including best musical, The Inheritance, which picked up best direction and best play, and Alanis Morissette’s musical Jagged Little Pill, which took home two Tony awards on performance and writing amid controversies over alleged mistreatment of trans and nonbinary performers.
The 74th Tony Awards show presentation was hosted by Tony, Grammy and Emmy award-winner Audra McDonald, while the special was hosted by Grammy and Tony award-winner and Hamilton alum Leslie Odom Jr. at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York City.
Tangent
Viacom CBS’ decision to break up the award show into two segments, airing only a portion of the broadcast on CBS and streaming the full show and special on Paramount Plus could be a factor in the lower viewership numbers, with more people potentially opting to stream the show online rather than watch it on television. Viewership numbers of the show on the streaming platform have not yet been released by Nielsen. Another factor that could have hit viewership numbers is the date when the shows were originally released, which were in 2019 and 2020 prior to the shutdown of Broadway. Unlike other award shows like the Emmys and the Oscars, which held virtual award showings in 2020, the Tony Awards postponed last year’s show altogether to 2021.
Key Background
Television networks have seen a decrease in viewership since the coronavirus pandemic began, and award shows in particular have not been as big a draw as they once were.The Grammys and Oscars viewership numbers dropped earlier this year and while the Emmy Awards saw a break in a multi-year streak of of record-low ratings, garnering 7 million views compared to 2020’s 6.4 million, the Tony Awards strayed from this brief upward trend. However, streaming services like Amazon Prime and Disney Plus are seeing a continuing growth in subscriptions following the pandemic. Amazon Prime added 29 million subscribers over 12 months to March for a total of 147 million, while Disney Plus has reached 116 million subscribers since launching in November 2019. This has prompted the Academy of Country Music Awards to air its show exclusively on Amazon Prime in 2022, hoping to capture some of that streaming audience.
Further Reading
Emmys Scores Highest Ratings In 3 Years After Record-Low 2020 (Forbes)
"low" - Google News
September 28, 2021 at 03:59AM
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Tony Awards Viewership Hits All-Time Low - Forbes
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