The 93rd Academy Awards were Sunday and for the second year in a row, viewership was at an all-time low.
Deadline reports that preliminary numbers from Neilsen show that 9.85 million people tuned in to watch the Oscars on ABC, making it the first time ever that fewer than 10 million people tuned in to watch the award show. There were just 1.9 million viewers among the coveted 18-49 demographic.
Total viewership dropped by 58 percent from the 2020 Oscars. The downward trend was even more drastic among the 18-49 age group, where viewership fell by 64.2 percent.
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Nomadland sets record for lowest-grossing box office results of a Best Picture winner
“Nomadland” won the 2021 Oscar for “Best Picture.” In doing so, it also won the unflattering distinction of becoming the lowest-grossing film to win the award in modern decades.
The movie follows a woman in her 60s who travels through the American west while living in a van after her husband dies and losing everything in the Great Recession.
According to Hollywood Reporter, the film has grossed somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 million.
The Oscars have never been strictly about popularity otherwise the highest-grossing movie would always win, but there is usually some overlap in critical and popular acclaim; after all, people like to see good movies.
Popular movies that raked it in at the box office that also won the Oscar for Best Picture include “Titanic,” “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” “Gladiator,” “Forrest Gump,” and “Dances with Wolves.”
The previous lowest-grossing movie to win the “Best Picture” award in the modern era was “The Hurt Locker.”
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L.A. homeless get the boot
The Academy Awards were held at a new location this year, Union Station in downtown Los Angeles.
The area is normally “plagued by homelessness” according to local station Fox 11 Los Angeles. The station also reports that the city is accused of coercing homeless individual to clear out for the star-studded event in order to make the city look better.
“They came to us about a week ago saying that we had to move by Friday 6 p.m. because they were trying to clean up for the Oscars,” a man living in a tent told Fox 11. “They told us if we didn’t move, they were gonna just demolish our stuff.”
Fox News reports that a city official denied anyone was forced to move, and a representative for the Academy Awards said that individuals were offered help with permanent or temporary replacement, but that relocation was optional. Fox News also reports that the Academy “had no comment when reached by Fox News regarding firsthand accounts of homeless people in the area,” who said they were told to leave.
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