Despite what wound up being a relatively enjoyable ceremony under the circumstances, Sunday night’s Emmy Awards dropped to all-time low ratings, breaking a record for futility set just last year.
This year’s broadcast was watched by just 6.1 million people, a 12 percent drop from 2019—when only 6.9 million viewers tuned-in to watch the festivities. That total represented a 33 percent drop from 2018, when 10.2 million people sampled the telecast. If those numbers seem bad, that’s because they are: the Emmys have set record low rating marks for three straight years.
There are some caveats, as the Television Academy and ABC would likely be quick to point out: The Emmy Awards faced marquee competition from the NFL and NBA playoffs on Sunday night. This year’s ceremony also took place on a Sunday night rather than a Monday, a la last year. Then there were the winners themselves, a trio of beloved, if arguably niche, series: Schitt’s Creek, Succession, and Watchmen. (Even last year’s lowly rated ceremony had Game of Thrones to celebrate.) Add those factors together with dwindling overall audience interest in awards telecasts—this year’s Academy Awards, which happened before the pandemic, was the least-viewed of all-time—and the ratings are anything but a surprise.
Certainly, host Jimmy Kimmel figured something like this would happen. In the lead-up to Sunday’s Emmy Awards, Kimmel tempered expectations for the show, telling Deadline there was a strong likelihood it would flop.
“I know everyone will get crazy when I say this, but this will probably be the lowest-rated Emmys of all time,” Kimmel said to Deadline before the show. “I would bet almost anything on it. Of course it will.”
More Great Stories From Vanity Fair
— Charlie Kaufman’s Confounding I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Explained
— Inside Robin Williams’s Quiet Struggle With Dementia
— This Documentary Will Make You Deactivate Your Social Media
— Jesmyn Ward Writes Through Grief Amid Protests and Pandemic
— What Is It About California and Cults?
— Catherine O’Hara on Moira Rose’s Best Schitt’s Creek Looks
— Review: Disney’s New Mulan Is a Dull Reflection of the Original
— From the Archive: The Women Who Built the Golden Age of Disney
Looking for more? Sign up for our daily Hollywood newsletter and never miss a story.