The 80th edition of the Golden Globe Awards aired on Tuesday, with the ratings subsequently revealing that it had the second-lowest viewership in the award ceremony’s history.
According to the Daily Caller, this year’s ceremony saw just 6.25 million viewers, which is the second-worst performance in the 28 years it has been airing on NBC. This year’s performance was a decline from the 6.91 million who watched in 2021, which itself was one of the lowest ever. There was no 2022 ceremony due to numerous controversies at the time surrounding the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the group which organizes and hosts the Golden Globes.
Only the 2008 edition of the awards had a worse performance than this year’s, primarily due to the normally extravagant ceremony being canceled in favor of a mere press conference that simply announced the winners. That event drew just 6 million viewers.
The 2023 edition scored a rating of 1.1 with the key age demographic of 18-49, which marked a decrease of 28 percent from the 1.52 score in 2020. But the largest drop in ratings between two years occurred in the 2021 show, after the 2020 ceremony raked in 18 million viewers.
The 2020 ceremony, which was the 77th edition overall, was especially popular due to host Ricky Gervais’ opening monologue, which went viral after he criticized numerous hypocrisies and double standards within Hollywood, much to the chagrin of the celebrity audience. This year’s host, Jerrod Carmichael, also used his monologue to grill the Hollywood Foreign Press over its alleged racism in the selection of nominees and winners.