Academy Awards TV Audience Down 2 Million

NEW YORK - With comedian Chris Rock, the Academy Awards succeeded in its effort to find a younger audience — but perhaps at the expense of the country as a whole.

A total of 41.5 million viewers tuned in Sunday to watch "Million Dollar Baby" take the Oscar for best picture. That's down 2 million from last year's show, which honored "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King," according to Nielsen Media Research.

ABC undoubtedly hoped for better, after preliminary figures released earlier Monday from the top 56 markets were the strongest they were in five years.

The drop in total viewership was an indication that this year's Oscar ceremony was more popular in the big cities than rural areas, more so than an average Academy Awards, said Larry Hyams, vice president of audience analysis and research for ABC.

Oscar ratings were up from last year among viewers aged 18 to 34 — a prime target for the advertisers who pay millions of dollars for time on what is traditionally the year's highest-rated program after the Super Bowl.

Hyams attributed the boost in young viewership to Rock.

"The academy made a concerted effort to go in a different direction and try to appeal to a younger audience with the Academy Awards, and it appears they have succeeded," he said.

It was the 12th time since 1990 that the Academy Awards drew an audience of between 40 and 46 million people, according to Nielsen. The peak during that stretch was the "Titanic" year of 1998 with 55.2 million, and the low point was 33 million in 2003, when "Chicago" won.

Rock said backstage after the Oscars that he hoped to do it again, although "who knows if they would want me again."

He attracted plenty of pre-Oscars publicity, including speculation about whether he would make jokes at the expense of President Bush (he did) or test ABC censors with curse words (he didn't).

"Put it this way, I don't curse in front of my mother," Rock said. "And my mother was front and center, you know, right in my view. So I could never curse in front of Rose Rock, so why would I do it on television?"

Oscar telecast ratings, viewers down from last year

By Cynthia Littleton
Viewership of the Academy Awards fete took a hit this year, probably because of the absence of mega hits competing in the top award categories. But the turnout for Sunday's live telecast was still well above Oscar's recent nadir set in 2003.

The ceremony that crowned Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby" best picture averaged 41.5 million viewers from 8:30-11:30 p.m. ET, according to preliminary estimates from Nielsen Media Research. (Final national ratings for the Oscars won't be available until Tuesday.)

That was down by 2 million viewers from the crowd drawn last year when Peter Jackson's blockbuster "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" steamrolled to victory as best picture.

The top Oscar telecast in recent memory remains the 1998 ceremony that lavished multiple awards on James Cameron's "Titanic" and drew an average of 55.2 million viewers. The lowest ebb for the Oscars during the past 30 years came in 2003, when the period musical "Chicago" cleaned up on statuettes but the nation was distracted by the onset of the war in Iraq and dramatic combat footage that competed with the ceremony.

Sunday's Oscar stats were on par with the turnout for the 2002 affair, when "A Beautiful Mind" won the top prize and the show drew an average of 41.8 million viewers. According to ABC, about 70 million viewers watched at least six minutes or more of Sunday's three-hour telecast, a healthy showing but not exactly the spike ABC and Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences were undoubtedly hoping for with the selection of edgy comic Chris Rock as the host of the industry's most august awards ceremony.

ABC was quick to point out that this year's ceremony drew Oscar's highest marks with younger viewers since 2002. In the adults 18-49 demo, Sunday's ceremony was down ever so slightly from last year, averaging 14.9 rating compared to 15.3 rating in 2004. But viewership was up slightly over the past few years in the Rock-friendly demos of adults 18-34 (12.7) and women 18-34 (16.1).

The top local market for Oscars this year was New York, where the ceremony commanded a 39.5 household rating/55 share on the ABC flagship WABC-TV. Several other major cities topped Oscar's hometown of Los Angeles (34.4/52) on the list of top local markets, including Chicago (37.7/52), San Francisco (36.7/56), Kansas City, Mo. (36.4/48) and Detroit (36.2/50).