Despite the winners, the obvious shortcomings of the 78th annual Golden Globe on screen on Sunday night were reflected in the ratings for the NBC broadcast ceremony.
Although the Comcast-owned network does not plan to release Nielsen’s final figures until Tuesday, semi-tuned nationals reveal that the double-staged show hosted by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler was hit last year. And we don’t mean just the blow that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has received from some of the biggest hitters in Hollywood because of the lack of black members in the 87-member group.
Arriving with a rating of 1.2 on adult demographics of 18-49 and about 5.4 million viewers, the 2021 Globes telecast dropped by about 60% in both categories of the partially adjusted fast national numbers captured last year by award show led by Ricky Gervais.
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2020 results soared to 18.3 million viewers and a rating of 4.7 in 18-49s in the final numbers Nielsen Live + Same Day ordered by NBC – numbers that are almost certainly well out of reach for Sunday’s program, numbers adjusted or not.
In his fourth time as co-presenters, SNL Students and friends Fey and Poehler certainly saw their three-hour appearance in 2021 drop dramatically compared to the previous HFPA tour in the old days of 2015. That period of co-host of the Obama era was an 11% drop in the main show of A second run by Fey and Poehler doing MC on the often drunken and released case in 2014.
Now, even though those initial numbers have all the NBC all-time low metrics, let’s be honest, all of these comparisons are a bit of an avalanche apple. As with almost everything in Hollywood and around the world, the pandemic has devastated the calendar and the format. Absent much of the atmosphere that gives Globo its appeal, last night’s glitchy and semi-virtual ceremony also aired almost two months after the 2020 show. So, no NFL advantage and a minor side effect in the holiday season, just two differences. In addition, as with Emmys 2020’s low audience, we saw Nielsen’s results from a series of award shows with coronavirus impact and other high-value events shrinking in the past year.
On the other hand, the streaming numbers for these events have been steadily increasing, reflecting the way TV is consumed today.
What all of this will mean for NBC when it finally releases Globes’s cumulative results on Tuesday, we’ll have to see – and we’ll update when those numbers arrive. But with CBS looking like Sunday’s winner now, if you want to place a bet …
Speaking of the network owned by ViacomCBS, CBS had a total audience of 6.5 million in prime time on Sunday. On a night of new offers from The equalizer (7.5 million viewers), NCIS: LA (5.7 million viewers) and NCIS: New Orleans (4.9 million viewers), the overall winner was at 7 pm 60 minutes with an audience of 7.9 million.