Grammy Awards Bounce Back 30% In Viewership, Marking Largest Audience Since 2020
07.02.2023 - 02:11
/ deadline.com
The Grammy Awards are making somewhat of a comeback. Sunday’s telecast of the 65th annual ceremony delivered 12.4M viewers across the CBS broadcast and digital platforms, according to fast affiliates. That’s up 30% from last year and the largest audience for ceremony since 2020.
The viewership is a much-needed boost for the ceremony, which brought in just 8.93M viewers last year and had failed to grow meaningfully year-over-year from 2021 to 2022. The 2021 show marked the Grammy’s least-watched iteration ever, which is in line with the hit that every other major awards show took after the start of the pandemic. The 2021 ceremony was one of the first in-person live TV events during the pandemic but was a scaled-down affair with no audience.
RELATED: Grammys: Harry Styles Takes Album Of The Year As Beyoncé Makes History: Complete Winners List
However, this year’s telecast was still a fairly low audience in comparison to pre-pandemic numbers. Just for comparison, the 2020 show earned 18.7M viewers in final numbers while the 2019 edition raked in 19.9M sets of eyeballs.
According to CBS, Music’s Biggest Night also reached its largest live-streaming audience in history across Paramount+ and other CBS digital platforms, up by 33%. On Paramount+ alone, live viewership was up 42%.
Among those who took home trophies on Sunday were Harry Styles, Beyoncé, Lizzo, Bonnie Raitt, Ozzy Osbourne, Kendrick Lamar, Willie Nelson, Adele, Sam Smith & Kim Petras, Bad Bunny and more. See the full winners list here.
RELATED: The Grammys GOAT: Beyoncé Becomes All-Time Champion With 32nd Career Win
Among the performances was a salute to the 50th anniversary of hip-hop that included a medley of such classics — performed by many of the originals