Sunday’s Golden Globes dropped to a new low in the key demo for the awards show since it began airing on NBC in 1996, drawing a 4.7 rating among adults 18-49, according to “Live + Same Day” data from Nielsen.
The previous demo low for NBC’s Globes came in 2009, when it settled for a 4.9 rating and 14.862 million total viewers.
Last night’s show — with saw host Ricky Gervais return for his fifth and “final” time, according to him — is down 11% in ratings compared to the 2019 Golden Globes, which scored a 5.3 in the advertiser-coveted demo and were up 6% from the 2018 event.
As for the audience size, the 77th Golden Globes drew 18.325 million total viewers compared to the year-ago show, which was co-hosted by Andy Samberg and Sandra Oh, and tallied 18.648 million viewers.
By that Nielsen metric, the 2019 show was down 2% from 2018. This year’s telecast slipped another 2%.
The 2019 Globes followed NBC’s NFC Wild Card Playoff game — a first. That seemed to work out, so they scheduled it the same way this year. However, Sunday’s Playoff ended at 7:39 p.m. ET, resulting in a 21-minute gap between the end of the game and the start of the Globes telecast, while last year the game ended at 7:54 for a six-minute gap. That can account for lower ratings, due to less of a boost from the NFL lead-in.
While the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s 77th annual awards show might have been down in the Nielsen numbers, they still dominated Sunday’s primetime ratings. See how the rest of broadcast television did here.
Find all the Globes winners here.