Sunday’s broadcast of the Tony Awards averaged 3.5 million viewers, a decline of about 15 % from final 12 months, in response to preliminary rankings information from Nielsen.
Although not an enormous drop from the 2023 present, which reached a mean of 4.1 million viewers, the viewership was the second lowest for a Tonys telecast since information have been stored.
The decline bucks a pattern from different main award reveals and reside occasions, which have been piling up rankings beneficial properties lately. The Oscars (19.5 million viewers in March) and Grammy Awards (16.9 million in February) have recorded three consecutive years of rankings development, as they climb out of the document lows of the early 2020s.
It additionally means the Tonys missed a possibility to finest the Emmys. In January, the strike-delayed Emmy Awards notched simply over 4 million viewers, coming dangerously near the Tonys. A decade in the past, the Emmys had eight million extra viewers than the Tonys. The subsequent Emmys ceremony is in September.
The Tonys, which aired on CBS, featured performances by Alicia Keys and Jay-Z and included main wins for “Stereophonic,” “The Outsiders,” “Applicable” and “Merrily We Roll Alongside.” The occasion obtained heat critiques from critics, together with Jesse Inexperienced of The New York Instances, who known as it “an enormous enchancment” over earlier years. Ariana DeBose hosted the present for a 3rd consecutive time.
Given their comparatively low viewership, the Tonys have lengthy been extra of a status play than a giant moneymaker for CBS, which has been broadcasting the awards because the late Seventies. CBS is signed as much as air the Tonys by means of 2026.
The occasion can also be a essential advertising and marketing software for Broadway, which continues to be struggling to match attendance figures from earlier than the pandemic.
The least-watched Tonys stay the pandemic-altered 2021 telecast, when fewer than three million folks watched. Probably the most-watched current Tonys was the 2016, “Hamilton”-fueled present, which notched greater than eight million viewers.
