The Emmy Awards averaged 6.87 million viewers on ABC Sunday night, a 54% increase in total viewers compared to the record 4.3 million viewers who watched the last ceremony on Fox earlier this year.
In key adults 18-49 ratings, the telecast averaged a 1.02, up 17% from a 0.87 in January. According to ABC, the 76th Emmys telecast had the largest total audience for an awards show in its history, since its 2021 broadcast on CBS. It also outperformed ABC’s previous telecast by 8% in total viewers, versus the virtual COVID telecast in 2020 (6.39 million).
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The January Emmys have struggled with viewership, having been postponed from their original September 2023 slot due to Hollywood strikes and having to air against an NFL playoff game. The last “typical” Emmys in September 2022 drew 5.9 million viewers — a failure at the time, down 25% from 2021’s 7.4 million. The good news for Sunday’s telecast is that it managed to overcome that.
Sunday’s show was aired in competition with the NFL, though the Texas Bears game was far less popular than the playoff game that drew viewers away from the Emmys in January. The recent Disney-DirecTV dispute, which caused a two-week blackout on Disney stations owned by DirectTV customers, was originally expected to impact Emmys viewership, but access to ABC and other networks was restored Saturday.
All in all, it's been a tough series of years for TV's biggest night.
In her review, diverse Critic Allison Herman called Sunday's Emmys “boring” and “a relatively muted event,” and that “it's hard to make an annual awards show feel special when it's held twice in one year” and that the awards “served as a reflection of a lesser event in television history, not a counterpoint.”
The show, produced by Jesse Collins Entertainment, still racked up some decent ratings for hosts Eugene and Dan Levy, and broke several records — including the most wins ever in a single year for a series (“Shogun,” with 18) and the most ever in a single year for a comedy series (“The Bear,” with 11). The ceremony also had its share of surprises, most notably the final win of the night for Max’s comedy “Hacks.”
