ARTICLE: Conan O’Brien-Hosted Oscars Telecast Tops Night In Adults 18-49, Hits Five-Year High In Adults 18-34

[Soap Opera Network]

Hosted by Conan O’Brien, ABC’s broadcast of “The 97th Oscars” on Sunday, March 2 was the most-watched and highest-rated program of the night, pulling in a 3.92 rating among Adults 18-49 and hitting a five-year high among Adults 18-34, while emerging as the most social program of the season for the first time on record, topping last month’s broadcasts of “The 67th Annual Grammy Awards” on CBS and “Super Bowl LIX” on FOX.

With 18.07 million viewers tuning in, the awards show now stands as the most-watched entertainment telecast of the 2024-2025 television season. That said, last year’s telecast performed better, averaging 19.5 million viewers and hitting a four-year high for the awards show. Additionally, this year’s telecast was also below 2023’s broadcast, which averaged 18.8 million viewers.

ABC should still be pleased with the performance as it topped the 10.4 million viewers who watched in 2021 and the 2022 viewership of the scandal-plagued broadcast that saw 16.6 million viewers watch Will Smith slap Chris Rock after the then-Oscar host made a slapstick joke about Smith’s wife and her alopecia.

Among Adults 18-49, the Oscars were up +3% year-to-year (3.92 rating vs. 3.82 rating) and marked its best performance in the key sales demographic in two years (March 12, 2023), with its 3.17 rating among Adults 18-34 outperforming the show’s pre-pandemic audience from five years ago (since February 9, 2020).

Averaging 104.2 million social interactions, the awards show stands as the most social program season-to-date, overtaking both the Grammys (102.2 million interactions) and the Super Bowl (62.4 million interactions).

Overall, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences noted that the Oscars saw an increase of +82% year-over-year in social engagement across all platforms, including Hulu, where it streamed live for the first time, reaching 64 million likes, comments and shares.

The ASL livestream on the official Oscars YouTube channel received 1.4 million views.

Immediately following the Oscars, ABC broadcast a 30-minute preview of the upcoming season of “American Idol,” which was viewed by 5.93 million viewers and earned a 0.84 rating among Adults 18-49. The post-Oscars viewing was the talent competition series’ best performance for a season launch in three years (since February 27, 2022) among Total Viewers and Adults 18-49.

On Sunday, March 9 at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT, “American Idol” officially kicks off its eighth season on ABC with episodes available to stream the next day on Hulu.

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