Tony Awards Viewership Drops 14% From 2023 to 3.5 Million on CBS

The 77th annual ceremony didn’t continue rebounding to its pre-pandemic viewership

Jonathan-Groff-Tonys
Jonathan Groff accepts the Best Leading Actor in a Musical award for "Merrily We Roll Along" onstage during The 77th Annual Tony Awards (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions)

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Viewership for the 77th Tony Awards was slightly down when compared to the 2023 awards ceremony.

The Sunday night event, which aired from 8:00 – 11:00 p.m. ET on CBS, drew 3.51 million total viewers, according to Nielsen live-plus-same-day fast national data. That’s down 14.8% from last year’s ceremony, which brought in 4.12 million viewers (this article will be updated when the final numbers are available on Tuesday).

Taking place on Father’s Day might have impacted the show’s viewership, with PUT (persons viewing TV) levels for Sunday marking the lowest Sunday primetime recorded since the measurement began over three decades ago. Additionally, overall TV usage saw a 10% downtick this year when compared to last year’s awards, which aired a week earlier in June.

The 2024 Tonys also failed to outpace viewership for the 2022 awards, which scored 4.22 million viewers. Still, Sunday’s ceremony did outpace the 2.6 million total viewers brought in by the 2021 hybrid telecast, though it was out of the cards for the Tonys to hit their pre-pandemic viewership of 5.4 million viewers in 2019, 6.3 million viewers in 2018 and 6 million viewers in 2017.

In the larger awards show picture, viewership for the Tonys was below that of the (first) 2024 Emmys, which hit a record ratings low with 4.3 million viewers on Fox, while tripling the 1.04 million viewers the 2024 Critics Choice Awards brought in on The CW earlier this year.

Broadway’s biggest night, which was hosted by “West Side Story” Oscar winner Ariana DeBose for the third time, also scored 3.3 billion potential social impressions across social media platforms on Sunday.

With “Stereophonic” and “The Outsiders” serving as the night’s top honorees, the ceremony saw wins for Hollywood veterans Sarah Paulson, Daniel Radcliffe and Jeremy Strong and nods for first-time nominees Rachel McAdams for “Mary Jane” and producer Angelina Jolie for “The Outsiders.” Broadway great Jonathan Groff also celebrated his first Tony for leading actor for “Merrily We Roll Along.”

Comments

One response to “Tony Awards Viewership Drops 14% From 2023 to 3.5 Million on CBS”

  1. cadavra Avatar
    cadavra

    It speaks volumes that the best major awards ceremony on TV would be the lowest-rated. People really don’t care about quality entertainment anymore.

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