TV Ratings Poor For the Emmy Awards

Television’s biggest night wasn’t that big. The Emmy Awards drew a record-low audience of just under 10.2 million people, down 11 percent from the past two years, according to the Associated Press citing Nielsen data.

The show reached virtually identical audiences of 11.4 million each of the last two years, the Nielsen company said.

The ratings decline continues a troubling trend for televised awards shows. The Oscars audience this year was down 19 percent from 2017 and the Grammys were down 23 percent.

The further fragmentation of television undoubtedly plays a role in audience interest levels. When “Frasier” was winning awards in the 1990s, the comedy was regularly seen in nearly 20 million homes. Streamed shows like “Mrs. Maisel” are far less popular and, in fact, it’s still difficult to get precise numbers about how many people watch them.

Three times in the 1990s, the audience for the Emmy Awards exceeded 20 million people.

Otherwise, football dominated the television ratings last week. Five of the 10 most-watched shows were football games, and two others were football pregame shows, Nielsen said.

Ratings for the NFL’s first 13 telecasts this season are holding their own against last year’s running tally — despite the lowest Week 2 rating for “Monday Night Football” since the game started airing on cable in 2006.

The 119.7 rating points amassed by the NFL so far this season are only 0.2 percent off the 119.9 rating points racked up during the first 13 NFL telecasts last year.

This week’s “MNF” had the Seattle Seahawks bowing to the Chicago Bears in a game that drew an overnight rating of 8.2 — a new low that replaced the 8.3 rating notched by the Chicago Bears and the Philadelphia Eagles in 2016.

NBC won the week in prime-time, averaging 6.7 million viewers last week. CBS had 4.8 million viewers, ABC had 4 million, Fox had 2.3 million, Univision had 1.4 million, ION Television had 1.33 million, Telemundo had 1.31 million and the CW had 740,000.

ESPN was the week’s most popular cable network, averaging 2.65 million viewers in prime time. Fox News Channel had 2.42 million, MSNBC had 2.13 million, HGTV had 1.35 million and USA had 1.34 million.

Basic cable ranker: Week of... by on Scribd

ABC’s “World News Tonight” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 8.8 million viewers. NBC’s “Nightly News” was second with 8.3 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 6 million viewers.

ABC’s Good Morning America was the most-watched weekday morning show yet again, averaging nearly 4.3 million total viewers for the week of Sept. 10, according to TV Newser.

GMA attracted its largest weekly audience in 5 months, while posting its strongest numbers in the key A25-54 demo in over 3 months.

That said, the program was -1 percent in total viewers, and down even more in the demo (-12 percent) vs. the same week in 2017.

NBC’s Today show was the No. 1 weekday morning show in the key A25-54 demo for the 142nd straight week, its best streak in over six years.  Today posted its best total viewer and A25-54 delivery since March, and delivered year-over-year growth in total viewers (+2 percent), the latter a feat none of the morning shows accomplish very often.