The Emmys can’t catch a break.
While other award ceremonies have managed to bounce back (at least slightly) from their pandemic lows, the 75th Emmy Awards hit another depressing milestone. Only 4.3M viewers watched Monday night’s ceremony on Fox, according to early Nielsen data.
That’s a significant decrease from last year’s previous all-time low, when less than 6M people tuned in for the show on NBC. The awards show was also down more than 37% from the last time the Emmys aired on Fox in 2019, when the audience sank to a then-historic low of 6.9M.
All of the above were much lower than the last Monday night ceremony in 2018, when NBC raked in 10.17M viewers.
Fox is still calling it a bit of a win, since the ceremony marks the network’s Monday watched Monday unscripted telecast in more than eight years (excluding sports, of course). It’s also the most-watched Monday entertainment programming in more than 18 months.
These numbers aren’t final, since Monday was a national holiday. Nielsen’s final numbers for the show will be available tomorrow, and they will likely be slightly higher than these totals, though not enough to make a huge difference in the outcome. This post will be updated when those numbers are available.
Despite the ceremony moving to January due to Hollywood’s dual strikes last year, the Emmys still had to go up against the NFL for primetime eyeballs. The Eagles lost to the Buccaneers in the wild card round, which was surely a highly watched matchup — likely even more of a primetime competition than any game during the regular season would have been.
The 75th Emmy Awards were basically a sweep for The Bear, Succession and Beef in the top categories. HBO led all networks with nine wins at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, followed by Netflix and FX with six each. Jeremy Allen White and Ebon Moss-Bachrach continued their awards-season rolls, as did Sarah Snook and Kieran Culkin. Also, Elton John completed the career EGOT with an Emmy win for Disney+’s Elton John Live: Farewell From Dodger Stadium. See the full list of winners here.