ABC, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ longtime broadcasting partner on the annual Academy Awards, shared on Thursday that the 95th Oscars telecast reached nearly 20 million viewers throughout the week of the ceremony across multiple platforms, an encouraging sign for a show that was coming off its two lowest-rated installments ever.
This news comes on the heels of night-of ratings hitting a three-year high, with the telecast averaging 18.76 million viewers (up two million from the 94th Oscars, a 13 percent improvement) and a 4.03 rating among adults 18-49 (a seven percent increase), according to final same-day ratings from Nielsen.
The new information: After seven days of viewing across linear and digital platforms, the 95th Oscars drew an average audience of 19.9 million total viewers and scored a 4.43 rating among adults aged 18 to 49 (equivalent to about 5.8 million people in that age range). Nielsen’s seven-day ratings, which don’t include streaming, have the telecast at 19.41 million viewers and a 4.2 rating, which would mean the remaining 500,000 or so viewers and 0.23 ratings points in the 18-49 demographic came from other platforms.
Additionally, the telecast’s ‘Nominees Spotlights,’ online featurettes that viewers were encouraged to access via QR codes at the end of segments, garnered 12.85 million collective views on YouTube.
And the Academy’s digital content views of the Oscars increased by 359 percent over the prior year and accumulated more than 760,000 new followers between January and March.
