{"id":530685,"date":"2026-03-18T11:32:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T11:32:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/530685\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T11:32:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T11:32:19","slug":"oscars-2026-tv-ratings-fall-to-17-9-million-viewers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/530685\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscars 2026 TV Ratings Fall to 17.9 Million Viewers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe TV audience for the 2026 Oscars<\/a> declined some, in keeping with a pattern from other recent awards<\/a> shows.<\/p>\n

\n\tSunday\u2019s 98th Academy Awards drew 17.86 million viewers on ABC<\/a> and Hulu, based on Nielsen\u2019s big data plus panel ratings. That\u2019s down about 9 percent from last year\u2019s Oscars<\/a>, which drew 19.69 million viewers<\/a> for a post-pandemic high, and the smallest audience for the awards since 2022, when 16.68 million people watched.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe show delivered a 3.92 rating among adults 18-49 (equivalent to about 5.34 million people in that age group), a 14 percent decline from 4.54 last year. <\/p>\n

\n\tOn the plus side, the Oscars maintained its usual spot as the most watched primetime entertainment telecast of the season. The show\u2019s social media stats also were up significantly, rising by 42 percent to more than 181 million impressions during the telecast (according to Talkwalker\u2019s Social Content Ratings).<\/p>\n

\n\tOne Battle After Another and Sinners ruled the night, with the former winning six Oscars (including best picture and best director for Paul Thomas Anderson) and Sinners taking home four awards (including a best actor win for Michael B. Jordan and best original screenplay for Ryan Coogler). Conan O\u2019Brien took his second turn as host of the awards.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Oscars followed the trend of the season\u2019s other two big awards telecasts, albeit with a slightly steeper drop. Both the Golden Globes<\/a> in January and the Grammy Awards<\/a> in February fell by about 6 percent vs. their 2025 editions.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe telecast was marred by audio glitches and other technical issues<\/a> \u2014\u00a0though not the streaming problems that plagued last year\u2019s ceremony, the first to live stream on Hulu\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and cut off a couple of winners while letting some scripted bits go on too long. The show also, however, featured heartfelt speeches by Jordan and best actress winner Jessie Buckley, well-received musical performances of nominated songs from Sinners and KPop Demon Hunters (the latter\u2019s \u201cGolden\u201d took home the award) and funny opening and closing filmed pieces featuring O\u2019Brien riffing on the nominated films.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Oscars also had an unusual, and unexpected, bit of competition Sunday night in the form of a World Baseball Classic semifinal between the United States and the Dominican Republic. FS1 and Fox Deportes\u2019 telecast of the game drew 7.37 million viewers, the largest audience ever for a WBC contest in the United States.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The TV audience for the 2026 Oscars declined some, in keeping with a pattern from other recent awards…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[1855,10546,88,29506,85403,9611],"class_list":["post-530685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-abc","tag-awards","tag-entertainment","tag-oscars","tag-oscars-2026","tag-tv-ratings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}