5 Most-Watched & 5 Least-Watched Oscar Broadcasts of the Last 50 Years

The Oscar statuettes gleam as brightly as ever, but the Oscar brand feels a little tarnished these days. Ratings for the Academy Awards have plummeted recently, with Hollywood’s biggest night getting half the audience that it did just a decade ago.

In fact, the ratings situation has been so dire that ABC threatened to cancel the Oscars telecast last year unless the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences dropped 12 categories from the hours-long awards show, according to The Hollywood Reporter. (In the end, the Academy’s decision to pre-tape certain categories satisfied the network, the publication adds.)

So why aren’t people tuning in? The Boston Globe attributes the Oscars ratings decline to a variety of factors, including the peak-television options that have reduced network-TV viewership across the board, the social media that have made both Hollywood stars and Oscar highlights more accessible, and the relative niche-ness of the Best Picture nominees. (This year, box-office sensations Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick are up for Best Picture, though Everything Everywhere All at Once feels like a lock for that top prize.)

While we wait to see what audience the 95th Academy Awards commands, here are the most- and least-watched broadcasts of the last half-century (with TV by the Numbers providing ratings information from 1974 to 2011 and Variety providing the stats since 2012).

95th Academy Awards, Sunday, March 12, 8/7c, ABC