Last year’s Oscars ratings were around 18.8 million depending on how you measured them.
By moving up an hour to 7pm last night, ABC brought in 19.5 million — only slightly better than last year.
It’s not a huge victory, but it’s better than doing worse than 2023.
The show was also actually a little short, at just three hours. It was accommodated for three and a half.
But with Best Song nominees not getting all the songwriters read aloud, and Best Picture flubbed again, a few minutes were shaved off the show.
The final numbers are the best since 2020, right before the pandemic. It helped that people had seen most of the movies and that of them — “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” — were big hits.
Jimmy Kimmel made some mistakes and a few laughs fell flat. But overall he’s an excellent host and should absolutely return next year — if he’ll do it.
Rickey Minor was a superb musical director, and all the numbers — especially Ryan Gosling’s spectacular “I’m Just Ken” — were exciting and compelling.
So, on to next year. With “Barbenheimer” having such big box office, we may have seen a peak Oscar experience.
