The Emmy Awards failed to match previous years’ viewership ratings, netting its smallest average audience of around 4.3 million viewers.
The average number of people who watched the Emmys ceremony on Monday night marked a new low point for the awards show, surpassing the previous low of 5.9 million set in September 2022. It is also the fifth time in the last six years that the show has set a record for drawing in the lowest number of viewers, according to data provided by Nielsen.
Additionally, the awards show failed to crack one million viewers among people between the ages of 18-49, only drawing around 0.85 million viewers in this demographic. In comparison, the ceremony attracted nearly 1.1 million viewers in such a demographic last year.
The ceremony was attended by drag queen RuPaul, who won the Emmy for best reality competition program. During his acceptance speech, RuPaul advocated drag queen story hours at libraries, a topic that has become greatly debated in the last few years.
The awards show also gave out five of the 12 acting awards to people of color, a move that created pushback online as people’s interest in diversity has recently waned.
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The Emmy Awards are typically held in September, though this ceremony was delayed by four months due to the actors and writers strike. As such, the ceremony had to contend with competition from Monday night playoff football, with the game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Philadelphia Eagles held on the same evening.
Other competition the Emmys faced came in the form of the Iowa caucuses, with multiple news outlets covering the election results.
