Golden Globes Audience Up 50% In Most-Watched Ceremony Since 2020
by CBS can breathe a sigh of relief.
The Golden Globes appears to be on the up and up, with 9.4M live + same-day viewers tuning in to watch the 81st annual ceremony, up 50% from 2023’s show, according to early Nielsen data. This number is likely to go up slightly when final numbers are in.
That’s a win for CBS and for the Globes after the award show attracted its lowest audience ever last year on NBC. The increased audience is likely due in part to the fact that the ceremony was moved back to Sunday, after airing on a Tuesday in 2023. The telecast also benefitted from being led in by a big NFL doubleheader, which surely boosted ratings.
Sunday night’s telecast also managed to surpass 2021’s audience of 6.9M. Though, this year’s audience still couldn’t hold a candle to the 18.3M who tuned in for the 2020 show.
That was the last telecast before the awards show came under fire for revelations about a lack of diversity and allegations of impropriety within the HFPA, the organization that previously awarded the Globes but was disbanded last year. This was the first Globes to hand out awards under its new governing body.
The Golden Globes is also not the only award show to see a decline in viewership over the last several years. The 74th Emmy Awards also hit an all-time low in 2022 with 5.92M viewers. Though the Oscars nearly touched 20M viewers last year, that telecast is also drastically down from the 40M who used to tune in within the past decade.
Awards were handed out Sunday to Cillian Murphy, took Best Male Actor in a Motion Picture Drama for Oppenheimer after Christopher Nolan won Best Director for the pic. Universal’s historical epic also won Male Supporting Actor for Robert Downey Jr, and the pic’s Ludwig Göransson took Original Score. Lily Gladstone made history with her first career nomination and win, and Poor Things managed an upset in the Best Motion Picture Musical or Comedy category. Read the full winners list here.
