The Oscars can say thank you to the movies “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie.” These films helped the Oscars get more viewers than before the pandemic. This year, the Oscars had the most viewers in four years. On Sunday night, around 19.5 million people watched it, according to Nielsen data released on Monday.
The number of viewers went up by 4% compared to last year’s Oscars. Last year, the Oscars gained more than a million viewers when people watched the show later. So, the total number of viewers will be higher than what Nielsen reported for the same day.
The Oscars had their lowest number of viewers ever in 2021. This happened because of the pandemic, which also made other award shows less popular. But now, ABC, the network that airs the Oscars, has been getting more viewers back each year for the past three years.
This year, the Academy and ABC decided to start the Oscars an hour earlier at 7 p.m. ET. They did this because the clocks changed for Daylight Savings Time, which usually means fewer people watch TV earlier in the evening. They hoped that by ending the show by 10:30 p.m. ET, more people would stay tuned until the end.
It seems like the plan worked. ABC says that the most people watched the awards show during the last half-hour, with a peak of 21.9 million viewers. Jimmy Kimmel hosted the awards for the fourth time this year.
In 2020, the Oscars had 23.6 million viewers. This was the last time the show had more than 20 million viewers on the same day. However, even though it was a lot of viewers, it was still the worst performance ever for the Oscars up to that point.
Including nominees that are popular with a larger audience, such as “Barbie” and the movie that won best picture, “Oppenheimer,” has always been thought to make more people interested in watching the Oscars on TV.
The TV show “Abbott Elementary” on ABC had its highest number of viewers ever, with 6.9 million people watching an episode that aired right after the Oscars.
