Update: Emmys ratings up a bit from the record low in January, but don’t get too excited. They’re still low.
It’s still hovering way down at the bottom, as you can see. But it good that they brought it up a bit:
We don’t have to wait for the ratings to come out for the Emmys. We know they’re going to be bad. They will tick up slightly for the Globes, but not by much.
I will confess I did not watch them. I couldn’t bear it. I can’t watch Hollywood trip the light fantastic, collect gold statues and then broadcast their political views to their shrinking viewers. I already knew what the show would be because, by now, they’re all the same. The problem is they have nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of the country.
The opening wasn’t bad but I had to laugh — and not in a good way — when Eugene Levy said, “you are here because you struck a chord with audiences.” Eugene and Dan Levy are funny. It’s just that everything has to be so … safe.
I did like how Eugene Levy said, “or god forbid political.” I mean, at least he said that, right?
The real problem is much bigger than one monologue or a bit. It’s systemic to the entire industry. The Emmys, the Golden Globes, the Oscars, right now will play like we’re watching some isolated utopia far, far from the struggles of daily life.
You know, like Shangri-la in Lost Horizon:
As with isolated cults and kingdoms, one can’t really speak the truth if it offends.
Words have power, and in a climate of fear like ours, people are afraid to say the wrong word lest they be FOUND OUT as bad people. The problem for Hollywood is that it’s boring and pointless and even a little infuriating to watch rich and famous people at awards shows. Most of them are outspoken Democrats — and that means everything they do is also political, even handing out awards.
True that Hacks beat The Bear and that was surprising. Shogun swept, and that wasn’t surprising. History was made. No one watched. Rinse, repeat.
It feels like things are happening in America that Hollywood can’t or won’t see. They have created for themselves a feedback loop. Nothing gets in and nothing gets out.
Take, for example, their nominees for Talk Show:
- The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
- Jimmy Kimmel Live! (ABC)
- Late Night With Seth Meyers (NBC)
- The Late Show With Stephen Colbert (CBS)
Those are the only shows Emmy voters found fit to vote on and yet all of these shows have one thing in common: they are propaganda for the Democrats. That’s it. That’s what they have become. They do not speak to America. They speak to that tiny group of people who still think Shangri-La is where it’s at.
According to the Hollywood Reporter:
Five years ago, The Late Show finished first in total viewers among late-night talk shows with 3.81 million, to 2.44 million for The Tonight Show and 2.04 million for Jimmy Kimmel Live. In 2023-24, The Late Show remained No. 1, but with only about 2.6 million viewers — a decline of about 32 percent from 2018-19. Kimmel moved into second with 1.82 million viewers, down about 11 percent from five years earlier (having Monday Night Football as a lead-in once a week last fall helped some; the show averaged 1.77 million viewers from January to May). The Tonight Show slipped to third in viewers with 1.43 million, losing 41 percent of its 2018-19 total.
But, as John Nolte at Breitbart points out, they neglected to mention the one late night talk show that IS doing well, Gutfield on Fox:
They blame TikTok and other streaming sites for pulling eyeballs from network television and that is true. But people are drawn to TikTok and YouTube because free thought still lives there. Content creators don’t exist in Shangri-La and they don’t have to answer to the press secretary at the White House. THAT makes them exciting, fun, controversial, interesting.
Instead, shows like the Emmys — and likely the Globes and the Oscars — will cater to the select few rather than the many.
To explain the ratings plunge, Nolte writes:
Because no one, not even leftists, find woke lectures and smug pandering appealing or entertaining. The whole idea behind Late Night when it launched with Jack Parr and Steve Allen some 60 years ago, was to give the American people a place to unwind before bed. A few laughs, some funny skits, a few attractive stars, good music… For three decades, Johnny Carson attracted around nine million viewers most every night. Today, his Tonight Show replacement, Jimmy Fallon, can only attract 731,000.
I get that the TV universe has changed along with people’s viewing habits. No one expects 15 million viewers in the age of 500 cable channels, the internet, and other distractions. But those distractions were all there five years ago when left-wing Late Night’s ratings were much healthier.
Something else drove those ratings down, and we all know what it is.
The Oscars, likewise, will only improve a little beyond the 20 million or so who still watch them. I don’t know how to say this any clearer: read the room. The majority of Americans can’t stand Hollywood anymore. They can’t stand celebrities, but especially celebrities who take to the stage and act like they are the oppressed ones.
And sadly, the feeling appears to be mutual. Without the constraints of the free market at the box office or with network television ratings, they don’t really have to care about audiences anymore. We’re invited to peer into their snow globe of a world, a paradise that never changes. But oh, how beautiful it is.
Making jokes about “childless cat ladies” and whatever else is not funny to anyone except the base of the Democratic Party. The same will be true, by the way, for Saturday Night Live. That’s the real heartbreak of Jason Reitman’s film Saturday Night — yes, it takes a side and mocks the Christian Right (because they had all the power back then), but no one will ever talk about the bigger point that Saturday Night Live is a shell of its former self. We already know what they will give us when they start the new season. They’ll make fun of Trump and JD Vance. They’ll push Kamala Harris. They are the same as everything else. Their ratings are tanking too.
The rest of America, the masses outside the bubble, have been put in a virtual gulag. But can’t everyone see how this is killing Hollywood? Even if it isn’t killing Hollywood, it’s most certainly killing awards shows. I don’t know anyone in my life who watches them, not on the Left or the Right. Surely, at some point, that has to matter, right? Otherwise what’s the point?
Here is how bad the ratings have been for the Emmys, according to Statista:
Like the Oscars, we can see that they really began to tank after Trump won. Gee, I wonder why? If you treat half the country like human garbage, make them the butt of every joke, aim your content only at the kind of people who live in Greenwich Village or Los Feliz, what do you expect?
So you see, even if the Democrats prevail, the business is still dying and will continue to die until they get over themselves. Can they? Will they? I do not know.
To put it bluntly, the extreme polarization we’re living through now is not something Hollywood can survive.
My advice, lower the gate to the castle and allow the other half of America back inside. Care what they think. Care about the box office. Care about ratings. Ultimately, the change will come anyway.
