Oscars 2026

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The ratings are in and they're down even more than last year.
The TV audience for the 2026 Oscars declined some, in keeping with a pattern from other recent awards shows.

Sunday’s 98th Academy Awards drew 17.86 million viewers on ABC and Hulu, based on Nielsen’s big data plus panel ratings. That’s down about 9 percent from last year’s Oscars, which drew 19.69 million viewers for a post-pandemic high, and the smallest audience for the awards since 2022, when 16.68 million people watched.

The show delivered a 3.92 rating among adults 18-49 (equivalent to about 5.34 million people in that age group), a 14 percent decline from 4.54 last year.
But that didn't stop the Hollywood Reporter from trying to find positives.
On the plus side, the Oscars maintained its usual spot as the most watched primetime entertainment telecast of the season. The show’s social media stats also were up significantly, rising by 42 percent to more than 181 million impressions during the telecast (according to Talkwalker’s Social Content Ratings).
 
I'm looking forward to the awards show in two years. Not to watch it, god no, but to marvel at how Hollywood will be extra self-indulgent over the 100 year anniversary, and of course it will be the start of the big election year where shitlibs in media will go extra hard to try and 'destroy MAGA for good'. I hope Newsome is one of the co-hosts.
 
I'm looking forward to the awards show in two years. Not to watch it, god no, but to marvel at how Hollywood will be extra self-indulgent over the 100 year anniversary, and of course it will be the start of the big election year where shitlibs in media will go extra hard to try and 'destroy MAGA for good'. I hope Newsome is one of the co-hosts.
The show will also be streamed free on YouTube.
 
Saving Private Ryan, a movie people still praise and watch regularity to this day, lost to Shakespeare in Love, which was pushed through by the Weinstein brothers using lots of academy wining and dining.
SPR is an utterly forgettable Spielberg paint-by-numbers schlockfest if we discount the Omaha Beach sequence.

As an aside, as a serious, if amateur, student of Tudor and Stuart England, it was so funny to little shout outs to people, places, and things of their world that meant nothing to the story beyond a throwaway line or something. When Will runs into the little boy hanging around the theater torturing rats and asks the boys name at it's John Webster, it's hilarious because Webster is a major writer in the next generation of playwrights and is well known for torturing his characters. Or how they made Henslowe the exact opposite of his actual character just because Geoffrey Rush is hilarious in the role of a bungling moron when the real Henslowe was the real brains behind the theater at times and we know so much about how they actually operated because he kept very detailed diaries.
 
The only reason the Oscars ever had the jump in viewers was due to Will Smith slapping Chris Rock. If I remember correctly the views for that night were slow until after he slapped him. After that it jumped up. People came back the year after hoping more drama would happen only it didn't. The hoped for some the year after that. By now everyone has given up and does not plan on wasting their time watching it.
 
SPR is an utterly forgettable Spielberg paint-by-numbers schlockfest if we discount the Omaha Beach sequence.

As an aside, as a serious, if amateur, student of Tudor and Stuart England, it was so funny to little shout outs to people, places, and things of their world that meant nothing to the story beyond a throwaway line or something. When Will runs into the little boy hanging around the theater torturing rats and asks the boys name at it's John Webster, it's hilarious because Webster is a major writer in the next generation of playwrights and is well known for torturing his characters. Or how they made Henslowe the exact opposite of his actual character just because Geoffrey Rush is hilarious in the role of a bungling moron when the real Henslowe was the real brains behind the theater at times and we know so much about how they actually operated because he kept very detailed diaries.
This is a severely incorrect statement about SPR. You're going to have to provide some evidence of why you think it's paint by Numbers schlock, sir.
 
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