Bump and grind. The bump is the 13% increase in viewership over last year’s broadcast (from 32 million in 2008 to 36.3 million last night). The grind is the fact that’s this increase falls short of the 40 million viewers who tuned in 2 years ago and doesn’t come close to the 55 million who watched a decade ago, the year Titanic took home 11 trophies (Kate Winslet’s second nomination, at the age of 22).
This 13% boost is more than twice the 6% figure being reported all over the place earlier today, so they may have been measuring some other ratings unit.
73 Responses for "Oscar ratings up 13%"
As long as there is an increase of atleast 10%, it’s still acceptable.
Just like movies, Oscars are an increasingly Global affair. Look at the acting winners the last two years. Movie studios rely upon foreign grosses to make profits and Oscars should also take pride in being telecast live in more countries than ever.
It’s enough.
Keep the new staging. Keep the past acting winners introducing the nominees (for christsake, add directors next time). Keep Jackman. Keep Condon and Mark. Keep the short running time.
Ditch everything else.
And please please please, nominate a better crop of films.
I agree with Dela, at least there is a substantial increase. I think with so many global artists being nominated we can expect an even bigger audience in years to come. Especially when movies such as Slumdog Millionaire and Smile Pinki win Academy Awards. I watched a video that discusses the “British invasion” of the Academy Awards that I found interesting because it gave global perspectives about the Oscars.
http://www.newsy.com/
This is probably about as good an increase as could have been expected, given that there were once again no smash hit nominees. I don’t think anyone reasonably could or should have expected the ceremony to go from 32 million to above 40 million in one year given the circumstances. There’s been a fair amount of good buzz after this year’s ceremony, so if the host and producers are kept the same, there could be another ratings bump next year (and it would help if they nominated better and more popular films). That said, it can’t be ALL about the ratings…
Huh…so this was the vaunted power of the TDK fanbase (with their inexplicable allies in the Far Right like the clowns at Big Hollywood). All that screaming. All the handwringing. All the cries of “out of touch elitists”. All the parsing of Box Office figures. All the schemes to add more categories or more nominees. And the ratings for a ceremony involving films that many felt were inferior to the 2008 field went…UP!
I guess maybe we won’t have to dumb down the Oscars to People’s Choice levels, huh?
Let this be a lesson to you fanboys and obsessive comic book geeks. You have no power, so you can suck it.
Before we get too obsessed with Box Office hits + Oscar = Ratings Bonanza, let’s remember the actual lowest rated Oscarcast. 2003. Remember that? Substantial box office hit Chicago defeated MEGAHIT Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers for Best Picture.
I think the convergence of Oscars matching the Guild results almost one for one does more to dissipate the impact of the final awards, however, I don’t know if anything can really be done about that.
Having better ratings than last year is like beating a dead guy in a tennis match. They could have broadcast a color test pattern and have gotten better ratings.
Slumdog
TDK
Wall-E
Milk
The Reader
now that would have been a swell line up, artistically and for good ratings…and I wouldn’t miss anything haha.
let this be a lession to all you oscarfanboys, this was the third worest ratings for the Academy Awards. suck on that
Erasmus
lol
I really hated the ceremony this year more than other years, and I wasn’t a bitter TDK fan. Here were my two basic qualms:
*The presenters were universally horrible. The whole five winners presenting to five nominees took too long and was patently uninteresting- and in the case of poor Sophia Loren, kind of grotesque (someone needs to banish her fashion consultant). The comedians paired with cute actresses…that needs to stop. Franco and Rogen make funny movies, but you have to know better than to ask those six year olds to act grown up at an awards show. And Will Smith needs to stop being so in love with his own cuteness.
*The musical number at the beginning was okay. The musical number combining the three songs was a nice way to save face for completely blowing that category (although it would have been better had they been able to bring in MIA and Peter Gabriel). The musical number in the middle was so out of place it was kind of embarrassing. Why do I care about Mama Mia and High School Musical if I’m watching the Oscars? What were those films relevance to the proceedings?
As for the positives:
1) Shorter.
2) Fewer montages.
3) Jackman, when not singing, is a generally charming host.
4) The nominated music was handled fairly well.
5) They gave more time for the speeches. This last one was huge for me. It’s nice to see them actually let the people who they’re honoring take their time with the speeches.
13% really positive for a year that was supposed to take a drop after the TDK fiasco. The most buzzed about acting front-runner was sealed, delivered, & posthumous.
The new stage design was great. Hugh nailed what he had to do. I hate host overkill on Oscar night. His timing, opening number, & presence was spot on. He laughed at himself (which was expected).
I liked the acting winners inclusion. Especially the bit when Douglas gave the Oscar to Penn and all the other actors embracing him.
What made last night great. The most deserving actors won.
The Picture was a unanimous pick, & the director. Nearly a clean sweep.
TCCOBB won the categories it was expected to win. Losing cinematography & costumes which it had a good shot at.
I sincerely hope A.R Rahman never gets nominated for another Oscar there was something about him that really annoyed me. I like Jai-Ho a lot, O Saya was an okay song & the score was good not great. But the man’s presence bugged me.
Seriously NYC Oscar Buff? Rahman is notoriously shy and humble, despite being one of the biggest selling musical artists EVER.
But anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the new set-up. I liked that there were less painfully unfunny nomination intros, and more montages of ALL the movies of the year.
Some things can be done away with, as I’m still no sure about the 5 presenters thing, but I’m glad that they tried it new.
Not to be entirely cynical, but since last year’s show had the lowest ratings ever, there was really nowhere to go but up. I still think the show was mostly awful (the best parts were the montage sequences of the different genres).
So what? Even though the ratings were up, it was still the third least watched Oscar telecast in history. I think the ratings went up because of the Heath Ledger factor. Had he been snubbed out of a nomination the ratings would have taken a dive once more.
So does this mean Oscar will remain on network TV and not have to go cable?
I’m happy.
Off topic. I noticed that the Wrestler boxo is $21Mil, and it was made for $5Mil, according to Rourke.
Is that good? Because he was promoting the heck out of the movie? Is that considered a profit? And does anybody think that Fox Searchlight put all its promo eggs behind Slumdog vs. the Wrestler?
ratings this, ratings that!! didn’t you guys watch? yeah, I thought so so shut up!!
due respect, Brandon, I can’t imagine millions of people tuning in to see Heath Ledger not be there.
If millions of people cared who wins Best Supporting Actor, Awards Daily would have a lot more traffic. Not saying his nomination wasn’t a positive factor. But perhaps not responsible for an additional 4 million viewers.
ratings this, ratings that!! didn’t you guys watch? yeah, I thought so so shut up!!
LOL, exactly.
Considering there was a full court press about the TV ratings from TDK fanboys and the lunatic right-wingers at NRO and Big Hollywood for damn near two months, the fact that the ratings went up is a nice victory.
Imagine if the ratings had gone down, you would have had the TDK “victory lap” on this site. Drudge would have probably run a banner headline “OSCAR R.I.P. 1928-2009″, and then National Review Online and Big Hollywood and the right wing dead enders would be lashing out about “out of touch Hollywood”, while again putting forth their bizarre theory that TDK was a celebration and/or validation of far-right politics, and then there would the call for panicked-influenced changes to the rules would be all that would be talked about for the next year. But the ratings went up, and that undercuts this notion that the TDK snub was literally the worst thing ever ever and would have incredibly dire consequences for all other films that dared to run against it for Oscar.
So the ratings still weren’t the greatest, but they weren’t the worst. A bullet got dodged.
By the way, Watchmen fans, keep your pieholes shut about Oscar in case the film is a hit.
Aren’t these the “overnight” ratings we’re talking about? If so, they measure big markets; I’m guessing when the final (nationwide) ratings are tallied, the bump won’t be nearly as big.
Erasmus.. I salute you!
Go to Hell Erasmus! All your rant and hating on so-called comic movies and fanboys makes you no better than those right-wing a**holes like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. You’re just as bad as those scum that had those hateful signs that said “God hates Obama, God Hates Gays, etc.” yesterday near the Kodak Theater.
Erasmus is Bill O’Reilly.
Yeaaaaahhh..Dennis. Comparing the troubles of comic-book geeks to that of gay Americans is laughable and pretty damn insulting. When you’re thumbing through your copy of Y:The Last Man, do you find yourself saying “man, I totally understand what Brandon Teena and Matthew Shepard must have been going through”.
The reality of this is, Dennis, that the TDK fanboys WILDLY overplayed their hand in the runup to the nominations, the aftermath of the nominations, and leading up to the ceremony. By god, if YOUR film wasn’t kissed up to, you clowns were going to burn the proverbial Gotham City (AMPAS) to the ground.
You gave it your best shot, fanboys, but you lost. Now go away.
“Erasmus is Bill O’Reilly”
LOL! All Those people with the tasteless signs that Sean Penn mentioned yesterday in his victory speech are the lowest common demoninator.
THE DARK KNIGHT: NOMINATED FOR 8 ACADEMY AWARDS
Even if they SNUBBED! it for Best Picture, TDK is the most nominated COMIC film to EVER be nominated for the Oscars.
HELL YEA…THAT IS STILL AN ACCOMPLISHMENT.
ERASMUS IS RUSH LIMBAUGH
Whatever, I’m Bill O’Reilly….jeesh…you TDK people are really easy to rile up, such thin skins.
The ratings went up, not down. You made the ratings your Last Stand, and it backfired.
Whatever…Bill O’Reilly.
I like to think that I’m Eric Bogosian from Talk Radio, only without the whole “getting murdered” thing.
When the Watchmen people get intolerable, you’ll hopefully remember that I warned you about them.
If Eramus despises comic books so much, how does he know about The Watchman and Y: The Last Man?
JR:
The ratings went up, not down. The TDK fans are as delusional as Sarah Palin.
Erasmus is kinda awesome. Completely wrong but awesome.
For his sake, I hope Avatar isn’t a gamechanger.
You know that the TDK comic-book fans will hitch their wagons to it and the next thing you know, Erasmus is rocking back and back in a corner clutching a Balzac novel, while Marcel Carné’s Children of Paradise plays on his Dell.
Well, I wasn’t talking about the ratings. But did you really think we so called “fanboys” we’re trying to boost the ratings up because we love TDK so much. Give me a break.
Bill O’Reilly, when the Watchmen people get intolerable, I’ll blame you for setting them off and maybe for the fact that you came out of the blue with this whole thing.
With all your attack on fanboys Eramus, I’m suprised that you haven’t also attack wrestling fans for there support for Mickey Rourke.
I don’t despise comic books. I do despise comic book fanatics that lack perspective.
Slice it any way you want, TDK while being a very good movie, simply wasn’t the transcendent masterpiece that some of you want to make it out to be. It didn’t really break any new thematic ground, and if anything the whole “sometimes the hero has to be bad in the name of good” thing gets pretty damn old. Additionally, I thought the last twenty minutes of the movie were an unfocused poorly written mess.
If Ledger hadn’t died, its box office take would have been a touch lower than it was. I’m sorry to say that, but the morbid fascination about his death was the most effective marketing tool a major movie has had in a long time.
Eramus reminds me of Michael medved, very narrow-minded!
Bill O’reily?
wow! what a low blow (even for me)
Loyal,
Big ups for a Children of Paradise blast!
I have no idea how Avatar will play out. For Cameron’s sake, I hope he succeeds, or people will say “you waited 12 years to make another film and THIS is what you came up with?” Cameron is many things, but Kubrick he ain’t.
Eramus, that’s your theory. Don’t think you’re talking facts.
Tyson, I actually felt pretty bad for Rourke last night. He did everything he could during the Oscar campaign, and he seems to have met the same fate as Bill Murray by just falling short against La Penn (get it, La Penn…like Le Pen…never mind)
Get Rourke hooked up with PT Anderson and good things will happen.
Aw, c’mon JR, you can do better than this. That other guy came up with a “Watching Children of Paradise on his Dell” blast. Best comment ever on this site.
Sorry, Eramus. I’m not looking to impress you. At least we can agree that we both felt bad for Rourke.
For the record, I never said TDK was a masterpiece. Guess a person can’t just like a film without being called a fanboy.
“Slice it any way you want, TDK while being a very good movie, simply wasn’t the transcendent masterpiece that some of you want to make it out to be. It didn’t really break any new thematic ground…”
The same thing can be said of Slumdog Millionaire
Yeah, Brian, but Slumdog as a film wasn’t nearly as self-consciously important as TDK. It’s utter lack of pretension arguably helped it separate from the pack when the uber-serious Oscar bait began to falter.
Boyle’s work in digital cinema has been very groundbreaking, and I’m thrilled for his success with this.
Slumdog wasn’t even the best of Boyle’s films. Trainspotting and 28 Days Later were way more superior.
Even The Beach was better
Erasmus, there’s probably no convincing you, but most of us here are way more concerned with the overall longterm integrity and relevance of the Oscars than we are with any single movie or performance. Hundreds of our readers have been following the Oscars since the time we were little kids — years or even decades before The Dark Knight was even made. What do you think kept us interested and enthusiastic in all the years before 2008?
What’s funny to me is how people like you refer to this “fanboy agenda” you seem to imagine. As if you think we have a secret club with regular meetings where thousands of meet at a castle on a remote island hideaway to plot our yearly strategy against common everyday moviegoers. I tell you what Erasmus, if the fanboys just “go away” like you want, you’d be here at Awards Daily pretty much by yourself, wanking off to your own comments. Except you wouldn’t be here, because “here” as you know it would not exist. Because Sasha is as much fangirl in her own unique way as any of the thousands of readers here are fans of Sasha herself.
But back to the point of this post: If I were so intent on wanting to prove that the relatively weak support of TDK would destroy the Oscars as we know it, I wouldn’t have linked to this story at all. But the fact is, many of us were very very happy with last night’s show — if not thrilled with every individual winner, we at least like some of the changes made to the format. So we want these changes to carry over to next year, where we hope to see them refined and further improved., and good ratings will help that happen. And yeah, we hope for the best selection of nominees possible too, the same as we have hoped for as long as we’ve watched the Oscars. What’s your problem with that attitude?
So much for the power of TDK fans to influence the Oscar television ratings. TV ratings went up over 10% despite boycott threats by whining fanboys….lol.
Amen Ryan!
There use to be a time when the Academy use to nominate popular films like Jaws, Star Wars, Raiders of The Lost Ark, E.T., for Best Picture, and sometimes in a Blue Moon they would actually win (Titanic, Gladiator, Lord of The Rings), but now the Academy has really stay out of touch with American audience with their pick of a Bollywood movie.
Well said, Ryan.
Erasmus is hard-headed.
You know what Erasmus? You’re entitled to your opinion, which is cool, but don’t make a sweeping stereotype that every person who loved the dark knight was a whiny fanboy who set out to destroy the Oscars. Stereotypes do not equal truth.
And I agree with Loyal Mehnart. Please AMPAS, step out of your comfort zone, and make some daring choices next time. Oh well, it’s like telling a strong right-wing conservative that Obama ISN’T a muslim; they’re just not gonna listen.
Also, tell me how it makes any fucking sense that ‘TDK’ is snubbed while crap like ‘Titanic’ can actually win BP?
Thank you Ryan.
I for one miss being able to talk to regular people about the Oscars. I’d go into a huge rant with people and there response was always “what the fuck is the Reader?” I’m not asking them to nominate Hancock, but it would be nice to see that members of the Academy live in the same world as we do.
Brian, TDK snub was a very bad decision but lets praise the Academy for not picking some stuffy Oscar-bait BP. Slumdog is a hit with audience and it is doing better than NCfOM at the box office.
“Also, tell me how it makes any fucking sense that ‘TDK’ is snubbed while crap like ‘Titanic’ can actually win BP?”
LOL!!!
Don’t get me started with 1968; Oliver winning BP while 2001: A Space Odyssey getting snubbed.
Not to mention the snubbing of American Gangster last year
In the perfect Best Picture storm, you’d have your indie, your prestige pic, your blockbuster, your headscratcher, and your trailblazer. Now maybe there’s some crossover (a gay black slave uprising film, as directed by Peter Weir!) but the point remains the same.
Personal opinion aside, by choosing multiple films cut from the same cloth, you’re not recognizing the best films of the year or even a cross-section of the academy voters. It’s more of the same (Frost/Nixon, Michael Clayton, Good Night and Good Luck).
Maybe the Best Foreign Film had it right (the new procedure that permits the academy’s internal foreign-film committee to overrule voters and add as many as three titles to the five in the category to widen the spectrum of nominees).
Then again, that’s cheating.
@Tyson,
EXACTLY!! I HATE Oliver with a vengance.
Tyson, let’s not go there. Because we’ll have a “Crash beat BB” riot on our hands.
Dela, I still pissed about Saving Private Ryan losing to Shakespeare in Love.
Here goes the TDK fanboys’ theory about the Oscars’ needing the TDK to survive. LOL
I honestly think the ratings when up just because the likes of Miley, Robert, Beyonce, Zac and Vanessa were there. That’s enough to get some people to watch, unfortunately.
Absolutely loved the show. Only parts I despised were having to watch Penelope win and Slumdog win Best Score… I mean, did you hear the other 4 nominees? It was NOT the best, by far. *sigh* But when a movie’s as loved as this people just mark it because it’s all they know about.
“Also, tell me how it makes any fucking sense that ‘TDK’ is snubbed while crap like ‘Titanic’ can actually win BP?”
Because The Reader was not released in 1997.
Titanic was a phenomenon, too big to ignore and, obviously, to forget. It was the first movie to make almost $2 billion (it actually came very close to $2 bio that calling it a $1 bio crossing movie is understatement) . TDK, OTOH, is 4th to cross the mark and, well, it`s no more a novelty. It`s a great movie but as impressive as its boxoffice is, it isn`t as impressive as that of the boat flick. Titanic got there first and although other 3 who joined the billionaire club put up a good fight, they didn`t come close money-wise. For illusitation, if Tiatnic earned $0 in North America it would still be #1 worldwide for its overseas gross is bigger than ROTK`s combined North American and international gross. Titanic made $1.2 from overseas markets alone. So, yeah, the thing is just beyond huge. Now lets predict which movie will cross $1 bio again. It`s been 8 years between Titanic and ROTK, then just 3 years between ROTK and DMC and then just 2 years between DMC and TDK. Can 2009 produce another billionaire?
I said this in another thread, but here it goes again.
I am a TDK fan and was not happy it wasn’t nominated. However, I never once thought about boycotting the Oscars and am happy the ratings increased. You know why? Because it shut up the right-wing lunatics on Drudge and conservative blogs who were praying for the ratings to be low so that they could bash Hollywood again.
That doesn’t mean things went swimmingly last night and things can’t change, but the people who have been screeching about “Hollywood values” and how “America has rejected Hollywood” have been strangely (but refreshingly) absent today.
But if TDK had been nominated, that easily would have been another 10 million viewers…yeah, yeah I couldn’t resist saying it LOL.
people watched because of hugh jackman show+heath ledger+ kate winslet+movie clips.yeah some fans wait wait for movie clips.
but ratings up 13% not perfect result for tv progammes.
In my opinion, Slumdog Millionaire will actually be looked at as one of the BETTER winners of Best Picture and a archetypical movie of this decade. Sure there are some better films — you can say that every year, with every Best Picture winner. Slumdog has crossover appeal, something you can’t neccessarily say for last year’s winner.
The Batman fanboys lost because the Oscars got support from the Wolverine fanboys.
People just love watching movies and in a strange way in types of recession people turn to movies for something good or something amazing. Slumdog Millionaire is one of the better movies of this decade to win best picture. A Beautiful Mind and Lord of the Rings follow.
“I’m not asking them to nominate Hancock, but it would be nice to see that members of the Academy live in the same world as we do.”
But that’s exactly what I like about the Academy Awards, that they don’t. We get to see a different perspective about films. We have the People’s Choice Awards and the MTV Movie Awards to see films of the masses.
The other difference between Titanic and TDK is that people were insane about Titanic. And it was really the entire populace. I remember the comic strip Foxtrot had a whole story arc about the mom who went to see Titanic every single day for month…and this is based on reality. People were actually doing that. AMPAS was probably just as caught up in the wave. TDK was/is popular, sure, but it was nowhere near the phenomenon Titanic was.
Anyway, back on topic. I’m very glad the ratings were up. I thought the show was good overall, and with a little tinkering and retooling they could have a really great show next year. Maybe one that even more people will watch.
do you forget.last year,ratings down because of the WGA strike.sooo 13% not success.
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