An increase of 54% to 6.9 million viewers
The Emmys brought an average of 6.87 million viewers to ABC on Sunday night, a 54% increase from the record 4.3 million who tuned in to the most recent ceremony on Fox early this year.
In the key ratings for adults aged 18 to 49, the broadcast averaged a rating of 1.02, up 17% from 0.87 in January. According to ABC, the 76th Emmys telecast generated the awards show’s largest total audience in those years since its 2021 broadcast on CBS. It also outperformed ABC’s previous broadcast by 8% in total viewers, compared to the 2020 COVID virtual broadcast (6.39 million).
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January’s Emmys struggled for viewers, having been postponed from their original September 2023 date due to the Hollywood strikes and forced to air against an NFL playoff game. The most recent “typical” Emmys ceremony in September 2022 drew 5.9 million viewers – which was considered a flop at the time, down 25% from 2021’s 7.4 million. The good news for the broadcast Sunday is that it was able to beat that.
Sunday’s show aired in competition with the NFL, although the Texans-Bears game had a much lower profile than the playoff game that drew viewers away from the Emmys in January. Disney’s recent dispute with DirecTV, which caused a two-week blackout of Disney-owned stations for DirectTV customers, was originally predicted to impact Emmy viewership, but access to ABC and other networks was restored Saturday .
All in all, it’s been a tough series of years for TV’s biggest night.
In her review, Variety critic Alison Herman called Sunday’s Emmys a “boring” and “relatively muted affair,” nothing that “it’s hard to make an annual awards show feel special when it’s staged twice in one year” and that the awards ” largely served as a reflection of a minor moment in TV history, not a counterpoint.”
The show, produced by Jesse Collins Entertainment, still racked up decent numbers for hosts Eugene and Dan Levy and also shattered several records – including most wins ever in a single year for a series (“Shogun,” with 18) and for most wins most ever in one year for a series (“Shogun,” with 18) and most ever in one year for a comedy (“The Bear,” with 11). The ceremony also had a number of surprises, most notably the evening’s final win for Max’s ‘Hacks’ as a comedy series.
