Grammys Ratings: Almost No Improvement Over Last Year's Catastrophe
The ratings for the 2019 Grammy Awards are almost as disastrous as last year, which hit a record low in the all-important 18-49 age demographic.
Deadline managed to come up with the best headline anyone can offer this terrible news: “Grammy Ratings Steady With 2018.”
It’s just that when you recall that 2018 was a ratings catastrophe for the Grammys, who wants to remain “steady” with a catastrophe?
According to the early results, Sunday night’s Grammy telecast pulled in a 12.8/22 in metered markets. This is in comparison to last year’s 12.7/21. So, at best, according to Deadline, the Grammy ratings increased less than 1 percent over 2018.
Context is important, though, and the context here is that the Grammy ratings nosedived by 20 percent last year, a breathtaking collapse. So you would think this year’s telecast would have nowhere to go but up…
Unfortunately, for the music business, unless you want to argue that “less than 1 percent” qualifies as “up,” the truth is that last night’s Grammys remained dead in the water with the American public.
And so, once the final ratings are out, chances are we are looking at another night where only 19 or 20 million tuned in. Compare that to the number of viewers in 2012 (40 million), 2013 (28 million), 2014 (29 million), 2015 (25 million), 2016 (25 million), and 2017 (26 million).
And then in 2018, the bottom fell out (19.8 million), and here we are in 2019, and the bottom is still out.
So what happened in 2017? What was such a turnoff that the Grammys lost more than 20 percent of its audience the following year and again this year?
Well, if you recall, the 2017 Grammys aired just a few weeks after President Trump’s inauguration, which meant that the Grammy Awards ended up being a garbage fire of hate directed at Trump and his supporters.
Obviously, the Grammy producers understand what happened, which is why last night’s telecast managed to refrain from any Trump bashing, but as we have seen across all of these obnoxious Hollywood award shows and their abysmal ratings; people have had enough of Hollywood’s hatred and intolerance.
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