The Emmys broadcast on Sunday was the lowest in recorded history for the second year in a row. Last month MTV’s Video Music Awards lost a third of its audience from the previous year even though Beyoncé, a category three supernova with her own gravitational pull, was performing. Last February the Oscars were at an eight-year ratings low and the same month the Grammys were at the bottom of their own seven-year ditch. It’s official: everyone is tired of awards shows.
If we look at the Emmys in particular, this broadcast raked in an average of 11.3 million viewers, down slightly from the 11.9 million who watched last year, but it was particularly bad in the under-49 demographic that advertisers crave in the same way Julia Louis-Dreyfus craves an all-time Emmy win record.
There are some reasons why this broadcast did especially poorly. The four major networks take turns hosting the show and this year it was ABC’s shot. They don’t have any NFL games early Sunday evening to syphon viewers into the awards show like Fox did last year, giving it a bump. Also, they were up against football on NBC, which probably drained away some people who otherwise would have been interested in Kate McKinnon’s acceptance speech.
Then there is the larger question about why people are so apathetic against award shows these days. One factor might be fatigue with all of the presentations one has during the year, not just the Emmys, Grammys, Oscars and Tonys that make up the coveted EGOT, but there are also the Golden Globes, the VMAs, the Billboard Music awards, the Country Music awards, the BET awards, the People’s Choice awards, the Critics Choice awards, and countless others. Heck, even the stodgy old Peabody awards had a telecast last year.
The reason for the proliferation was that there was a surge in ratings for awards shows several years ago. The Emmys were gaining in momentum and in 2013 had an especially highly rated year with 17.6 million viewers. In 2014, the Oscars also had a strong year (12 Years a Slave won) with 43.7 million viewers, but just two years later those numbers were down to 34.4 million (Spotlight won).
The spike, which was also felt by the Grammys and other shows, was blamed on social media. The theory was that people wanted to watch in real time and talk about the events with their friends on Facebook and Twitter, so it was actually bringing people back to live television after years of ratings erosion thanks the DVRs and other “time shifting” techniques. This is why awards shows became so important, because it was one of the few ways networks could get people to actually watch the commercials.
Broadcasters started to put all their eggs in the awards show basket, along with betting on sporting events and those live musicals that everyone is doing now. But even those are experiencing diminished returns. Ratings were down 15% for the 2016 games in Rio and none of NBC’s musical outings like Peter Pan (9.2 million viewers) or The Wiz (11.5 million) could outperform its inaugural Sound of Music Live (18.3 million).
It appears that the novelty of live events has worn off. Even just a couple years later we live in a much more “on demand” universe where people can hardly even stomach a 15 second ad before watching the new Rihanna video. How can they deal with four to five breaks an hour backed full with the stuff of consumerism that pays the networks bills?
Speaking of the internet, part of the problem has to do with how the cord-cutters are watching awards shows. While the VMAs drew only 6.5 million viewers, MTV said live streams of the event soared 70% over 2015 to 62.8 million video streams. Also, many viewers know that the key events, great performances and memorable speeches from every awards show will be available online the next day so they only have to watch the few four-minute clips that everyone is talking about rather than slog through three hours of self-congratulations and more car commercials than even the biggest Top Gear enthusiast could stomach.
There is also something about the awards themselves. While the host doesn’t seem to matter too much (sorry, Jimmy Kimmel, you were great) there has been some correlation at the Oscars between high ratings and blockbusters being nominated for best picture. The all-time high Oscars telecast was in 1998, when 57.2 million people watched James Cameron become king of the world for Titanic, one of the highest-grossing movies of all time.
That may be the problem that the Emmys is currently facing. While critics generally praised the festivities and best drama winner Game of Thrones is a huge cultural phenomenon, most at home have barely even heard of Baskets (which averages about 500,000 viewers on FX) or know why Louie Anderson really deserved his best supporting actor in a comedy trophy for appearing on it. The same goes for American Crime, the Sherlock made-for-TV movie, and possibly even Master of None (but we’ll never know because Netflix still won’t release ratings information). While it’s way more cool to watch HBO, Netflix, Amazon, or even cable networks like FX or AMC, more people still watch network shows which are noting more than a blip on the Emmy ballot.
So, what can awards shows do to get back their cultural relevance, or at least their high viewing numbers? Well, obviously giving all the gold to comic book movies and the Big Bang Theory is one option, but nothing that critics or the Academies would really be happy about. The thing about this rapidly changing television environment is that no one has quite figured it out. The answer is probably a combination of having cheaper shows streamed directly to fans with a collection of the best bits edited together for general TV consumption. Most people just want to see the winners, a great performance or two, and the best and worst fashions of the night, not Jimmy Kimmel’s mom making everyone PB&Js.
But getting people to watch linear television and paying attention to the ads that support it is something not only facing the Emmys but many of the actual shows leaving triumphant on Sunday night. Perfecting its award show is something that is going to have to wait until the TV industry answers questions about its own survival.
