According to the latest data released by AC Nielsen in the United States, the combined viewership of the 97th Academy Awards on ABC and the streaming platform Hulu was only 18.07 million, a 7% decrease from the 19.5 million viewers of the previous session; there is also a small gap compared to the 18.8 million viewers in 2023.
For reference, this year's Grammy Awards attracted 15.4 million American viewers, down 8% from the same period in 2024; the Golden Globe Awards attracted only 10.1 million American viewers. It is worth mentioning that since last year, the start time of the Oscars has been moved up one hour from 8 pm (EST) to 7 pm.
Although the current Oscars ceremony has tried every means to shorten its duration, including removing the Lifetime Achievement Award and some technical awards, it used to last until around 12 a.m. After starting an hour earlier, the two awards ceremonies ended around 11 p.m. The organizers also hoped that this would be closer to the public, after all, most viewers would need to punch in at work early the next morning. However, judging from the ratings alone, this alone is not enough to reverse the trend of declining attention to the Oscars and fewer and fewer viewers. Because the 7% drop was too ugly, the organizers even included mobile phone data in the recalculation after the statistical results came out.
Some people don't want to watch the Oscars, but some people want to watch but can't. The awards ceremony on Sunday night was broadcast live on the streaming platform Hulu, but a technical failure occurred at the beginning, causing about 30,000 users to be unable to log in. In the last few minutes of the ceremony, the Best Actress and Best Picture awards had not yet been announced, and Hulu's live broadcast had ended early at 10:30 pm, causing viewers who missed the finale to flock to social media and scold Hulu for being irresponsible.
Afterwards, Hulu's parent company Disney issued a public statement to apologize and remind everyone that the full replay is available on Hulu and Disney+, and users who missed the live broadcast can watch it online. The reason for ending the live broadcast early is reportedly because 10:30 that night was exactly the time when the award ceremony was originally scheduled to end. Hulu displayed the words "Thank you for watching!" and "This live broadcast has now ended. You can exit and choose other programs to watch" on the screen on time according to the pre-set settings.
The main reason for the low ratings is naturally related to the fact that the Oscar-nominated films themselves are becoming less and less popular with American audiences. Last year, "Oppenheimer" became the highest-grossing Oscar Best Picture winner in 20 years, but this year's "Anora" became the lowest-grossing Oscar Best Picture in North America in recent decades, excluding "Nomadland" which was affected by the epidemic and "The Hearing Girl" which was only released on streaming platforms.
Mickey Madison in "Anora."
"Anora" has been released in North America since October last year. The producer Neon Films, as usual, adopted the distribution route of niche art films, and only screened it in 6 theaters in New York and Los Angeles in the first weekend. As a result, the average revenue per theater in the first weekend reached US$91,750, which is quite high. After all, the film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival last year, and the media reviews were also good. The movie fans and intellectuals on both sides of the East and West have been looking forward to it. However, in mid-November last year, when the scale of "Anora" was expanded to 1,500 theaters across North America, it failed to win the favor of the general public. Although it has not been taken off the shelves yet, the total box office in North America is only US$15.6 million.
The last time a similar situation occurred was in 2009 when The Hurt Locker won an Oscar, with a North American box office of only $17.01 million. Even for other works like Spotlight and Moonlight, which are not very interesting to mainstream American audiences, the total North American box office was $45.05 million and $27.85 million, respectively, which further highlights how unpopular Anola is with the audience. When the film's director Sean Baker took the stage to accept the award, he repeatedly emphasized the importance of independent films and called on Hollywood to increase its support to attract more audiences back to theaters to watch all kinds of movies on the big screen. However, in fact, the North American box office of independent films, documentaries, and art films has never been able to recover since the epidemic. Not only Anola, but also the three-award-winning Savage School only had a North American box office of $15.78 million. Such a general trend may not be reversed by one or two shouts of encouragement.
Sean Baker holds four Oscar trophies. Visual China Photo
Back to the awards ceremony itself, due to the tense relationship between the newly elected President Trump and most Hollywood filmmakers, the outside world originally expected that the award presenters or winners might make bold critical remarks at the ceremony. But in fact, there were basically no political remarks at the awards ceremony, especially no criticism of Trump by name. Although the Best Actor winner Adrien Brody set the record for the longest acceptance speech in Oscar history, he mainly reminded people not to forget the great trauma caused by war, anti-Semitism and racism, and did not talk about the current situation.
In his acceptance speech, Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, who won the Best Documentary Feature for "My Only Home," pointed out that the U.S. foreign policy is hindering the political solution of the Palestinian-Israeli issue, which was the most direct criticism of the U.S. government that night. Afterwards, Israeli Culture Minister Miki Zohar posted on social media that the film's Oscar win was "a tragedy for the film industry" and "a slander against Israel."
As for the award results, although the lead actress of "Anola", Mickey Madison, unexpectedly won the Best Actress Award, her two competitors showed great goodwill. Demi Moore ("Something Substantial"), who was previously the most popular candidate for the award, published a closing speech of the award season on social media, and at the end specifically mentioned: "Warm congratulations to Mickey Madison, can't wait to see your next work." Fernanda Torres ("I'm Still Here") comforted Brazilian netizens who were going to the competition at a press conference, asking compatriots to "give love to the incomparable Madison."
Demi Moore congratulated Midge Madison on her award.
Mickey Madison and Demi Moore.
Mitch Madison greets Fernanda Torres.
Of course, there are also people who are dissatisfied with the results. Sheryl Lee Ralph, who starred in "2 Broke Girls" and "Elementary School", criticized the values of the Oscar judges in a public interview: "I have said it over and over again. The fastest way to get an Oscar is to either do pole dancing or act like a prostitute." It is reported that, including this year's Mickey Madison and last year's Best Actress winner Emma Stone (Poor Thing), there are 14 actresses in the history of the Oscars who have won the little golden statue (including the leading and supporting awards) for playing sex workers.
Actress Sheryl Lee Ralph criticized the direction of the Oscars in an interview.
