Posted on 03/17/2026 5:13:47 PM PDT by abb
The 98th Oscars audience slipped to a four-year low this year with 17.86 million viewers across ABC and Hulu on Sunday.
That’s down about 9% from last year, when the show tallied nearly 20M viewers after Disney accounted for PC and mobile viewing. So, it’s possible this number might go up slightly. It is, of course, still worth noting that’s much higher than most other award shows in recent years, including the Golden Globes, Emmys and Grammys.
It’s difficult to say exactly why the show underperformed this year, especially since the viewership numbers for the Oscars had been on the rise recently.
Keeping in line with the last few years, the Academy opted for an earlier start time again, kicking off the ceremony at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT, meaning the show stayed largely in primetime. Over the last few years, that has certainly seemed to help retain some of the audience who might have tapped out previously, when it was quite common for the Oscars telecast to go past 11 p.m. ET.
The show was also minutes away from being one of the longest Oscars ever, though. So, while it was an exciting night with some history making wins and even a few surprises, the sheer length of it was likely a turn-off for viewers.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another scored a leading six wins, and Ryan Coogler’s Sinners was next with four, ending a marathon awards season in which the studio mates duked it out over the course of several months. Amid the studio’s $110 billion acquisition by Paramount Skydance, Warner Bros led distributors with 11 statuettes. Netflix was next with seven, including three for Frankenstein. The streamer’s KPop Demon Hunters was the only other film to score multiple trophies Sunday, and no other studio got more than one.
Michael B. Jordan won the contentious Best Actor race for his dual role as Smoke and Stack in Sinners, following up his triumph at the Actor Awards two weeks ago. Jessie Buckley then surprised no one with her Best Actress win for Focus Features’ Hamnet.
I thought they could have found someone other than Russell Crowe to play Goering. His character was way too fat. Goering had slimmed down quite a bit by that time.
I couldn't understand why they bothered to introduce a female journalist into the mix. She was a fictional character inserted into the movie. She shows up in the early part of the film, meets Dr. Kelley on the train, and they run into each other during the trials, but there was no other relationship between the two of them in the film. Her name is Lila McQuaide, and I'd only recently seen her in the MGM+ TV series "Robin Hood." She plays the daughter of the Sheriff of Nottingham portrayed by Sean Bean. She's quite the hussy in the TV series...naked in sex scenes. The only thing I can think of for her having a small part in Nuremberg was that she was somebody's girlfriend, and was given the part for that reason, or it was part of her contract to have a certain number of roles.
I'd read the book "The Nazi and the Psychiatrist" several years ago. Bought it on Amazon and gave it to my son. I remembered that one of the psychiatrists who was at Nuremberg, eventually committed suicide, but wasn't sure if it was Kelley, but in the end, the movie reported that he had killed himself with a cyanide capsule like Goering.
I also wondered, if in real life, was Dr. Kelley as naive as the movie made him appear, about the atrocities committed by the Nazis. In the movie, it wasn't until the film on the concentration camps was shown during the trial, that Kelley reacts like it's the first time he's realized what the Nazis had been up to all those years. Kelley had been the Director of The San Francisco City and County Psychopathic Hospital prior to joining the army, so it's not as if he hadn't encountered evil before in patients.
I haven't been able to confirm or deny whether Dr. Kelley ever visited Emma Goering, and carried letters back and forth between husband and wife as portrayed in the movie. Since I don't have the book in front of me, I could only do internet searches, and couldn't trust if the search results were based on what occurred in the movie, or in real life, despite the wording of my searches.
That’s kind of funny.
The lowest viewership ever was at the height of the Democrat’s Mandatory Covid Home Detention Program.
oh darn..
I thought it’d be lower.
green puppets in a trash can?
Oscar? I know Oscar, Felix’s roomie. And Oscar Levant, piano and musical man. And the Muppet.
Thanks.
I’ve heard it’s a good movie. I was going to check it out from our local library but the dvd is still on order so the library hasn’t received any copies yet. There are currently 76 holds on 14 dvds!
It wasn’t a defense - more disappointment that 91% would still stick with that nonsense.
I gave up buying DVD’s a long time ago, especially after I joined Netflix who mailed the DVD’s I’d requested. Then they went to streaming only, and I’m still a member. I’ve got three cabinets loaded with DVD’s. I just hope my kids can get an estate agent to get rid of them, and all the books in my bookshelves when I’m gone.
Oh, 91 percent still awaiting enlightenment! They’ll wake up someday, hopefully . . . .
Many years ago plus more years I would watched the Oscars and enjoyed it as beautiful ladies and men entertained me which was great. They gave praise to great acting and entertainment without regard to political correctness.
Oddly “Blazing Saddles” was the turn point of entertainment and political correctness. That movie was insanely good and the satire was insane. It busted all concepts and was excellent. It was funny in the extreme and totally ridicules. It hit all prejudices both white and black and rendered it stupid.
Most sad that today Hollywood is a graveyard of excellence and naught but left wing propaganda. Blazing Saddles would not be produced in Hollywood today.
I loved it those many years ago.
I saw "Nuremburg" also, and I wondered why Russell Crowe did not get, at least, a nomination for Best Actor. He was terrific.
I also saw "Frankenstein" and I thought that Jacob Elordi was wonderful as the Monster. He did get a nomination for Supporting Actor.
I didn't sit and watch the entire program, mostly because I was bored with it.
I agree.
I saw “Nuremberg” this weekend too. It’s a shame it got no nominations at all. At Least Russell Crowe should have got Best Actor.
I stopped watching the Oscars many years ago. The last time I was interested in the best actor category was when Gary Oldman portrayed Winston Churchill in the 2017 film "Darkest Hour." His performance was phenomenal. To me he was Winston Churchill, and I was so glad that he'd won. I like Oldman as an actor. I've been watching him the past five seasons in Apple Tv's "Slow Horses." It's been renewed for a 6th and 7th season. He's plays a slovenly and grumpy head of a group of dysfunctional MI5 agents who were once flying high, but have screwed up sometime in their career, and ended up in "Slough House." It's an excellent series.
One thing I'd read about the movie Nuremberg, is that when they showed the documentary film during the trial scene, the director told all the actors and extras, he didn't want them watching the original 1948 film before being exposed to it during the filming. He wanted their original reactions to the content of the film as they saw it during the filming of that scene. One thing I did before watching the movie, was download the 1948 remastered version of the original documentary...the one they showed at the actual trials. I found it on a torrent site.
Before TV shows were streamed, I watched more movies on DVD. When I did watch TV series, I always recorded them on the DVR, then watched them without the ads. I dumped cable and the DVR probably 6 or 7 years ago, and went strictly to streaming, which means I watch more TV series than movies now. I'm not a binge watcher, but prefer to watch one episode from a series, then watch an episode from another series afterward.
I'm also particular about the TV series I watch. I'm not into sit coms, reality, game shows, or games that pit humans against humans in challenges. I never watch live events, and pay extra to eliminate ads. I'm more into historical, mystery and detective series, and prefer those that are UK and Australian produced.
It was a good movie. I watched it alone on my laptop in my living room. I did find myself getting emotional through some of the scenes, especially the concentration camp film, despite having seen many of those clips previously.
I read the book "The Nazi and the Psychiatrist," which the movie is based on. It was many years ago, and I gave the book to my oldest son after I'd finished reading it. I'm interested in history, and read a lot of non-fiction history books. I've read biographies of Hitler, Reinhard Heydrich, along with other topics related to the Third Reich. I've got two books in my unread pile on Albert Speer, one written by himself, and another written by a German female journalist who conducted many in-person interviews with Speer after his release from prison. That book is titled: "Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth by Gitta Soreney. It was published in 1995. Soreney passed in 2012.
I've been slowly making my way through the Nuremberg trial transcripts on my Kindle, as well as William L. Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." After I watched the movie this past weekend, I dug out a book that I bought quite a while ago, but never got to. It's called "The Nuremberg Interviews: An American Psychiatrist's Conversations With the Defendants and Witnesses" by Dr. Leon Goldensohn who replaced Dr. Douglas Kelley about six weeks into the trials. Goldensohn had planned to write a book, but succumbed to TB and heart problems before he could get started. The book is edited by Robert Gellately, who received the doctors interview notes from family members after he died. Gellately went through all his interview notebooks, and put together, concise renderings of the interviews that Goldensohn had conducted. My paperback copy was published in 2004.
I've only gotten through one interview so far, and that was with Admiral Karl Dönitz. The biggest thrill Dönitz got was when the Chief of Staff of some American Admiral who was visiting the trials and had personally conveyed greetings from the American Admiral to Dönitz through his defense lawyer. Dönitz told the doctor: "Your American Admiral said he held me in the highest esteem, and thought that I had conducted my defense perfectly. He said through his Chief of Staff that my conduct was beyond reproach and that he had the greatest admiration for me." Dönitz didn't know the name of the American Admiral, but expressed the importance of the greeting from his lawyer. He continued to mention that during interviews. I believe he thought he was going to get acquitted because of it. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
The first time I heard of MBJ (best actor) was “Creed” where he played Apollo Creed’s son in the next generation of Rocky movies.
The elitism mandate of Hollywood is creating this mess. Why do studios push movies on Netflix and Amazon over cinemas?
ABC gave up the Oscars for the Grammys in the next bid cycle. The Oscars move in 2029 to Google, showing how they care about reducing audience sizes to appease elites.
Oh, you mean people didn’t tune in to see DEI and American bashing navel gazers engage in narcissism?
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