Oscar viewers rose 12% to 18.7 million

After a surprisingly eventful ceremony last year, the 2023 Oscars went smoothly on Sunday. Everything, everywhere, all at once ended its awards season with a whopping seven trophies, including best picture, as well as three of the four acting categories. It was the most awarded film at the Oscars in a decade.

And the audience seemed to respond, if only a little. The 95th annual ceremony drew 18.7 million viewers, a 12% increase over the previous year when the show drew 16.6 million viewers. The show also received a 4.0 demo rating, up from 3.8 the previous year.

Both ceremonies remain among the least-watched and lowest-rated in Oscars history, although ratings were up significantly from the 2021 Hostless Oscars, which drew 10.4 million viewers.

Apparently, it was a very social Oscars affair, as the ceremony attracted some 27.4 million social interactions across Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube over the course of the night. That’s about 5 million more than last year, which is a bit of a surprise given The Slap’s workload was before.

It was possible for the Academy to nominate the top two grossing films of the year – Avatar: The Way of Water And Top Gun: Maverick — for Best Picture might be enough to generate additional interest in this year’s show. It’s certainly worked to some degree in the past — and it could be one of the many reasons why this year’s ceremony saw a surge in viewership. That year was the most-watched Oscar show in history, with around 57 million viewers titanic was nominated in 1998. It won Best Picture and 10 others.

But even before the pandemic, the Oscars had been steadily declining in terms of viewership. 2020’s 23.6 million was nothing special when viewership almost doubled just a few years earlier.

The return of a veteran host like Jimmy Kimmel may also have had a positive impact on ratings. The last time Kimmel hosted was in 2017 and 2018. Some 33 million people watched in 2017 — the year of the infamous envelope snafu the country the best picture trophy when it should have gone moonlight – and the number dropped to around 27 million in 2018.

The following year, 2019, the number of viewers at the Oscars rose again to almost 30 million. It was also the year Black Panther, a period film that debuted at #2 at the worldwide box office and earned $1.3 billion, is also nominated for Best Picture. This year the sequel of the film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is excluded from the race for the best photo.

The fact that the respective star power is behind both is potentially worthless boss And avatarTom Cruise and James Cameron did not attend this year’s ceremony.