Are people still interested in the Oscars?
By Kelvin Arthur
The iconic award for The Oscars was designed by by Los Angeles artist George Stanley in 1928
The pinnacle of entertainment awards has always been the Oscars. However, recent statistics
suggest that people aren’t interested anymore. In 2014, the Oscars had a home audience of 43.7 million people. This number has halved since then with 19.5 million people in the US tuning in for the awards at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on Sunday.
Until 2018 no Oscar awards show had dropped below 30 million people but since then, they haven’t reached that number. This trend of disinterest has been happening from 2014 up until the year that COVID hit the Oscars and only 10.4 million tuned in. However, this does mean that the numbers in the past four years have doubled.
This trend has been the case for other awards shows too such as the Emmys or the Grammys which have seen large declines in viewership from around the same period. It may have been the shock of the 2022 awards that brought more viewers back, when Will Smith slapped that year’s host, Chris Rock. This resulted in a 10-year ban from the ceremony for the actor.
The 2024 Oscars did have its share of notable moments, such as John Cena’s creative way of presenting the award for best costume. He presented the award completely naked except for the winner’s envelope to cover him.
A large complaint with the ceremony was the presenters of the awards. Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t well received for his joke about Robert Downey Jr’s history of drug consumption. Also, when Al Pacino simply announced the winner of the best picture rather than reading out all the nominees, people felt the final award was made anti-climatic by this.