Emmys Early Ratings Sink 10 Percent From Last Year to New All-Time Low

NBC awards show decline is less egregious than that of the 2018 Oscars or Grammys

Colin Jost Michael Che 70th Emmys 2018
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Monday’s 70th Emmy Awards on NBC sunk 10 percent in early ratings from last year, settling for a new all-time low with a 7.4 household rating. That Emmys decline is not as bad as the ones for the Oscars and Grammys, which dropped 16 percent and 20 percent year over year, respectively.

Last night was NBC’s highest-rated Monday since late 2015. The network pretty much tripled the overnight rating of its closest competition, CBS, which posted a 2.5. NBC’s 7.4 topped the combined rating of the rest of the Big 4 broadcast nets combined by 23 percent.

Final Emmys numbers — including total viewers — are expected to be reported later on Tuesday.

The best-of-TV celebration aired on a weeknight this time around because of NBC’s “Sunday Night Football.” That game did pretty well to close out the weekend, so the scheduling worked out for the network.

Last year, the 69th annual Emmys on CBS hosted by Stephen Colbert dipped 2.4 percent from the prior year to a new low, per Nielsen’s household ratings. That 8.2 overnight rating was imperfect, however, as the Miami and Fort Myers markets were never reported due to Hurricane Irma. This time around we are missing the Raleigh-Durham market due to Hurricane Florence.

In 2016, the Jimmy Kimmel-hosted Emmys broadcast on ABC fetched an 8.4 in these earliest-available TV ratings, which had set a historic low of its own at the time.

The Emmys rotate around the Big 4 broadcast nets. Fox has them next year.

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