Golden Globes ratings hit a high note
As La La Land danced its way to victory with seven Golden Globe awards, NBC also had a strong night, boasting its best audience in several years.
The 74th annual Golden Globes garnered 20 million viewers Sunday night, up 8% from a year ago and skidding to a halt two straight years of declines, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal.
The WSJ cited Nielsen numbers to note the 20 million mark, which was up from 18.5 million last year and 19.3 million in 2015. Perhaps it was polished host Jimmy Fallon, or much-loved, and diverse, movies like winners Moonlight, or shows like Atlanta, The Crown and The People v. O.J. Simpson, but people seemed to be in the mood to celebrate, and that spelled a spike in viewership. Maybe it was Meryl Streep’s speech criticizing President-elect Donald Trump as she received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for her stellar body of work, or the fact that social media exploded shortly after that speech.
Regardless, the larger numbers bucks an industry-wide trend that has seen viewers declining, even for live-only events like awards shows and even the holy grail of NFL football programming. The Academy Awards, the story pointed out, pulled in only 34.3 million viewers last year, the smallest audience for the top awards show since 2008.
Maybe the spike in viewership for NBC was because it did not offer live streaming for the event, due to the fact that it did not have the online streaming rights from the show’s presenters, the Hollywood Foreign Press. Whatever the case, it bodes well for the rest of awards season.