This past Sunday’s Academy Awards were not the ratings hit most were anticipating. With 26.5 million viewers this year, Oscars ratings dropped 19 percent in 2018 from what they were in 2017 and hit an all-time low. The nearly four-hour broadcast averaged an 18.9 rating among households between 8 p.m and 11 p.m.
Never one to stir away for pettiness, Donald Trump tweeted of the March 4 ceremony, hosted for the second time by Kimmel,
“Lowest rated Oscars in HISTORY. Problem is, we don’t have Stars anymore – except your President (just kidding, of course)!”
Soon after, Kimmel responded on Twitter,
“Thanks, lowest rated President in HISTORY.”
On Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Tuesday night, Kimmel continued his comments against Trump by telling the story of how he came to see the tweet. He said he woke up that morning and got a text that told him to look at Trump’s twitter account. “As if I don’t already do that every morning,” Kimmel joked.
After reciting the text of Trump’s tweet, Kimmel got serious.
“But the truth is, every year since Netflix happened, the ratings are down for every big TV event: the Super Bowl, the Grammys, the Emmys, the Golden Globes.” He added that Trump thinks he’s responsible for ratings being down, but that he got the last laugh, since, “My tweet [responding to Trump] got twice as many likes as his tweet.”
“I know that’s the thing that will get under his orange skin,”
Kimmel continued on that Trump often has a problem with the Academy Awards, but that he might like 2018’s best picture winner, The Shape of Water.
“It’s about a monster that has sex with a woman who can’t talk about it. It’s like his life story,” Kimmel joked, referring to the alleged “hush agreement”
The low Oscar ratings just show that for the most part, appointment television is a thing of the past and with many other options, casual film watchers are choosing something else to watch.
