(New York) The Emmy Awards hit a new audience low Monday night, with an estimated audience of 5.9 million, even smaller than the COVID-19-disrupted ceremony two years ago.
Posted at 10:37 a.m.
The Nielsen company said that the ceremony rewarding the best works of television, where Ted Lasso was named Best Comedy and Successionbest drama, was down from the 7.4 million people who watched in 2021.
Usually airing on a Sunday night, the Emmys have been moved to Monday to make way for the first game of Sunday Night Football from NBC, which aired the day before. The ceremony, however, could not escape football, since it was in competition with the American television show Monday Night Football.
The Emmys were hosted by Kenan Thompson of the variety show Saturday Night Live.
The previous low for the Emmy awards, with 6.1 million people, was reached with a significantly reduced show due to the 2020 pandemic.
Although football has had an impact, Emmy ratings have steadily declined since the awards began to be dominated by shows on cable and streaming platform services. With so many television programs on offer, there are fewer and fewer that attract the large audiences that were common when television was dominant.
The last time the Emmys topped 10 million viewers was in 2018, when they reached an audience of 10.2 million. The Emmy Awards drew 21.8 million viewers in 2000, a level that will likely never be reached again.