News March 16, 2021

This year’s Grammys ratings hit new lows, with less than half of 2020’s viewers

The lowest audience viewership ever for the Grammy Awards was back in 2006 when they garnered a total of 16.99 viewers.

While that might’ve been a majorly unsuccessful year back then, if the Grammys could’ve achieved those kind of views this year they would’ve been damn happy with themselves.

This year Grammy Awards Show did not pop off – at least not on paper.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, this year’s ceremony garnered only 8.8 million viewers during the show, which is less than half of the number of people who watched the Grammys last year, whereas the 2020 Grammys boasted a total of 18.69 million viewers with a 5.4 rating of adults between 18-49. This year the rating for the same bracket ranked at 2.1. Now that’s a notable decline.

While we may all be quick to jump to the conclusion that we’re all just off the television because we’re addicted to our phones, whether that’s Instagram, TikTok or YouTube, if we turn our attention to the facts for Oprah’s interview special last week, we may realise that this isn’t entirely the case.

Oprah’s exclusive interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, Oprah With Meghan and Harry last week reportedly drew 17.8 million viewers.

Consequence of Sound note that the ratings have not yet been adjusted for the live telecast in the US’s west coast or home viewing data, however, it’s still unlikely that once these adjustments are made, the ratings will ring up to scratch with the Grammys in previous years.

It’s interesting to note that the lead-up to this year’s Grammys was certainly an unprecedented one, with so many artists – more than ever before, publicly addressing the fact that they have a lot of unresolved problems with the Recording Academy.

The Weeknd led the way on this front, demanding answers from the institution after he was severely snubbed for a nomination. However this did result in Drake making a very insightful call on how this can all be improved.