ITV’s airing of the Oscars 2024 awards ceremony drew in more than double the number of viewers that Sky saw across all its channels last year.
The broadcasting giant saw a peak of 1.1m viewers at 10:16 PM, just after the glitzy event commenced on Sunday evening. Throughout the night, audiences averaged at 551,000 viewers.
ITV said it is expecting continued viewer engagement, not only with the ceremony but also with other related content available on both its channel and the streaming platform ITVX over the course of this week.
ITV’s UK coverage, hosted by film critic Jonathan Ross, outshone Sky’s live broadcast for the year 2023, which managed an average of 95,000 viewers.
Last summer, rival broadcaster Sky relinquished its two-decade hold on broadcasting the prestigious LA awards ceremony, a tradition it upheld for the past 20 years.
This decision followed a trend of declining viewership over the past three years for the Oscars. Since 2021, ratings for the event have failed to capture the audience allure despite the presence of numerous Hollywood luminaries up for awards.
In 2023, only 18.7m viewers tuned in, marking it as the third worst performance in Oscars history, trailing weak figures of 15.4m in 2022 and a rock-bottom of 10.4m viewers in 2021.
At the Oscars this year, Cilian Murphy won ‘Best Actor’ for his performance in Oppenheimer, which also won ‘Best Picture’. Emma Stone took home the ‘Best Actress’ award for her role in Poor Things.
Stone gave a teary Oscars acceptance speech:
The well-received show will be a boost to ITV after the company has been battling an advertising downturn. Last week, it reported a drop in overall sales for 2023 despite an uptick in digital revenue and a record performance from its ITV Studios business.
Coverage of the ceremony was shown in the US on ABC.
Anatomy of a Fall won ‘Best Original Screenplay’, while summer blockbuster Oppenheimer swept up seven awards last night:
Meanwhile, Barbie was snubbed and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of The Flower Moon failed to take home a coveted trophy from any of its ten nominations.
Several viral moments served audiences some talking points on social media, including an almost naked appearance by American wrestler John Cena and Ryan Gosling’s rendition of ‘I’m just Ken’, the hit song from the Barbie movie, alongside 65 other ‘Kens’.