The Golden Globes Awards viewership is still in the toilet despite receiving a boost this year by following CBS’ NFL broadcast of the Green Bay Packers vs. Chicago Bears game on Sunday.
Sunday’s broadcast of the Golden Globes scored 9.4 million viewers, up 50 percent from around 6.3 million last year — an improvement trumpeted as a victory by CBS Mornings anchor Gayle King on Tuesday in a blatant bit of corporate media synergy.
But the numbers still paint a dire picture for the beleaguered Globes.
The 2022 broadcast took place on a Tuesday, which helped make this year’s viewership look good by comparison. In addition, last year’s broadcast on NBC didn’t benefit from NFL viewers forgetting to change the channel after the game.
Overall, the Globes audience is still way down compared to pre-COVID years, languishing below 10 million viewers as Americans continue to avoid the annual Hollywood exercise in self-love.
As recently as 2020, about 18.4 million tuned in to watch the awards show.
This year’s show was marred by unfunny jokes and an excruciatingly languid pace, with even the mainstream entertainment media deeming it as “unfunny,” a “near-total disaster,” and a “new low.”
Sunday’s primetime broadcast was meant to be a reboot of sorts for the beleaguered and rating-challenged Globs. CBS took over from NBC, seeking to rebrand the annual party as a new and improved version of the quasi-shady and ethically suspect awards-season ritual that just two years ago became the black sheep of Hollywood.
But despite the strong presence of numerous A-list stars, not to mention the Barbenheimer, the show struck many as a fiasco.
The three-hour telecast crowned Oppenheimer and Poor Things as the best movies of the year, while also heaping honors on the series Succession and The Bear.
Barbie was mostly shut out, though it did manage to snag the Globes’ new award called “best cinematic and box office achievement” — a category clearly designed to juice viewership.
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