The 97th Academy Awards telecast over the weekend netted the show 19.69 million viewers, a five-year high for the program, thanks to people using personal computers and mobile devices.
Early Nielsen numbers showed that 18.1 million tuned in Sunday to watch the ceremony, according to industry publication Adweek. That would’ve been a decline of over 7% from the previous year’s show, which had 19.5 million viewers.
Ratings data from mobile devices, PCs and tablets added 1.645 million viewers to the total, wiping out the ratings slump, a Disney spokesperson said.
Nielsen normally accounts for these viewing methods, and the discrepancy between its fast national data and the updated data isn’t usually this significant, according to Deadline.
The views came in despite technical issues with Hulu. This was the first time the Oscars were livestreamed on Hulu concurrently with the ABC broadcast.
Less than 30 minutes into the show, 34,000 people reported Hulu streaming issues on outage reporting site Downdetector, according to Variety.
“Yesterday evening, we experienced technical and livestream issues on Hulu, which impacted some Oscars viewers. We apologize for the experience,” a Disney spokesperson told Adweek. The full show has since been uploaded to Hulu.
The 2025 Oscars also drew more young viewers than in recent years, notching the highest ratings among people ages 18-34 since 2019 and a five-year high for the 18-49 viewer demographic, a Disney spokesperson said.
The Oscars were also the highest-rated nonsports and nonnews telecast of the 2024-25 season.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.
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