Grammy Ratings Dip Portends 2025 Awards Show Plateau

The 67th Annual Grammy Awards was one of the best iterations of music’s biggest night in years, and it raised millions for Los Angeles wildfire recovery efforts to boot. Despite the positive reception, it seems the years of Grammy ratings growth have hit the brakes, leaving the rest of awards season on an ominous note.

Per Nielsen, Sunday’s Grammy Awards saw a total audience of 15.4 million viewers, a roughly 9% decrease from 2024’s 16.9 million. Last year’s Grammys stood out thanks to several living legends gracing the stage and Taylor Swift announcing her new album mid-acceptance speech, all of which may have contributed to the show’s highest post-pandemic viewership.

In a refreshing twist, along with established chart-toppers, 2025 gave rising stars the lion’s share of the airtime, which allowed for stellar performances by Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX and Doechii, among others. But despite the online buzz these artists generated after the ceremony, that excitement didn’t translate to greater viewership of the broadcast itself.

This audience dip has broken the Grammys’ two-year streak of ratings growth, with last year’s 35% jump putting the show in range of its pre-pandemic audiences. This slide back down to 15.4 million is a roughly 18% decrease from its pre-COVID 2020 broadcast, which drew in 18.7 million viewers.

Of course, it should be noted that audiences for the Grammys and the rest of the awards show slate were already shrinking well before that. Now that the post-pandemic ratings bounce seems to be over and audiences continue to abandon traditional TV, perhaps this latest drop for the Grammys is simply picking up where things left off.

Looking at other recent awards broadcasts reveals a mixed bag, at best, for the remainder of awards season, a far cry from the strong showings that defined 2024.

EMMY AWARDS

Even as all awards shows have struggled to bring in viewers in recent years, the Emmys have had a particularly rough go: While it was one of the only ceremonies whose ratings didn’t tank in 2021, it logged two consecutive all-time lows after that.

Last year’s January ceremony, which was delayed from fall 2023 due to the Hollywood strikes and shared a time slot with an NFL game and a presidential primary debate, had a particularly bad hand that culminated in the show falling below 5 million total viewers for the first time.

Thankfully, that year’s second Emmys broadcast, in September — the final ceremony of the 2023-24 awards season — saw a solid 6.9 million total viewers (up 55% from the early 2024 ceremony), making for its largest audience since 2021 (7.8 million) and just shy of 2019’s final tally (7 million). Its 18-49 audience also earned a 1.03 rating, which is 18% higher than last year’s 0.9 but still the second-lowest 18-49 rating since 2016.

Like other awards shows, Emmys still have quite a climb to reach pre-pandemic viewership, but the latest ceremony has at least officially ended its multiyear tailspin.

GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS

The 2024 awards season started with the Golden Globes bouncing back in ratings after a shaky return from its controversy-induced hiatus. The broadcast’s 9.4 million total viewers were a 50% increase from 2023 and gave hope for the rest of the awards shows that maybe the tide would lift all ships.

Almost all awards broadcasts last year indeed saw healthy ratings boosts (maybe this will be the Tonys’ year), but it seems the Golden Globes may have already found its ceiling. Despite the 2025 broadcast (the first produced by Dick Clark Productions, owned by Variety parent company PMC) getting positive critical and audience responses, total viewership dipped about 2% from last year’s tally, to 9.3 million, and the 18-49 rating broke even at 1.8.

These new figures put “Hollywood’s Party of the Year” (trademarked) still well below its pre-pandemic viewership, which hovered comfortably in the range of 18-to-20 million, but in all fairness, holding steady can be considered somewhat of a win in the volatile post-pandemic awards show landscape. That 9.3 million total audience is still around 50% larger than its 2023 draw, and Globes was the third most watched awards show behind the Grammys and Oscars in 2024.

Still, if last year’s Globes was the groundhog that signaled a bountiful springtime for the rest of awards season, this season might see flatter trendlines across the board.

We’ll know soon enough if the Academy Awards will see a similar ratings outcome as the Globes and Grammys or pull off another boost like the Emmys — but the fact that last year’s ratings already showed signs of a slowdown isn’t the most encouraging sign.