The award for the least-watched Academy Awards show of all time goes to the 2021 version of the Oscars.
The 93rd iteration of the iconic awards show experienced a 58.3 percent ratings drop from last year, based on Nielsen Live+Same Day preliminary national numbers, according to Variety.
Previously, the lowest total viewership for any Oscars was 23.6 million in 2020. This year, fewer than 10 million people — 9.85 million to be exact — tuned in.
According to fast national ratings, the drop among viewers between the ages of 18 and 49 was 64.2 percent.
The show has seen a significant ratings decline in the 18-49 demographic in recent years, going from a 7.7 rating in 2019 to 5.3 in 2020 to Sunday’s 1.9.
The Oscars managed to even out-fail the Grammys in terms of the audience decline. The 2021 Grammys suffered a 53 percent drop in viewers compared to last year.
Dominic Patten, writing for Deadline, said the ratings were no surprise.
“Coming off years of declining results in general, plus the last several months of little-watched virtual awards shows, theaters closed due to the coronavirus pandemic and a slate of Oscar nominees that lacked big name recognition, the Disney-owned network and [the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences] long have known they were in for a drubbing,” he wrote.
“It was only a matter of how bad things were going to be, not if they were going to be bad — and it was bad.”
Speeches embraced an anti-police theme.
Travon Free, one director of “Two Distant Strangers,” lashed out at the police when he accepted the Oscar for best live-action short film.
“Today the police will kill three people and tomorrow the police will kill three people, and the day after that the police will kill three people because on average the police in America every day kill three people,” Free said.
“Those people have been disproportionately black people,” he added, according to Fox News.
“I ask that you please not be indifferent. Please don’t be indifferent to our pain.”
Some pushed back at the police bashing.
Hollywood elites talked about defunding the police at an event heavily guarded by police?
Oh okay.#Oscars
— Kimberly Klacik (@kimKBaltimore) April 26, 2021
The anti-border, pro-gun control celebrities were protected by a giant wall and hundreds of armed police.
We’ve got the images that are being buried by Big Tech – so get this out there before it gets deleted.https://t.co/crWsEJecfV
— LawEnforcementToday (@LawEnforceToday) April 26, 2021
Tyler Perry, winner of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, took a different tone.
“Don’t hate anybody,” he said. “I refuse to hate someone because they are Mexican or because they are black or white or LBGTQ. I refuse to hate someone because they are a police officer. I refuse to hate someone because they are Asian. I would hope that we would refuse hate.”
“I want to take this Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and dedicate it to anyone who wants to stand in the middle, no matter what’s around the wall, stand in the middle, ’cause that’s where healing happens. That’s where conversation happens. That’s where change happens. It happens in the middle.”
“So anyone who wants to meet me in the middle, to refuse hate, to refuse blanket judgment, and to help lift someone’s feet off the ground, this one is for you, too. God bless you and thank you Academy,” Perry said.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
