Ratings for the Emmy Awards were down nearly 10% from last year, with the viewer numbers dipping again after a couple of years of growth.
About 6.7 million viewers tuned in to watch the 78th primetime Emmy Awards on NBC, according to data released Tuesday by the network.
"Widow's Bay” from Apple TV was Monday night's biggest winner by far on the telecast hosted by "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” star Mariska Hargitay, setting a record for a comedy with 14 Emmys. "The Pitt” won best drama for the second straight year.
The show aired against the stiff competition of the first Monday Night Football game of the year between the Kansas City Chiefs and Denver Broncos on ESPN.
The Emmys telecast brought in an estimated 6.87 million viewers on ABC in 2024 and 7.42 million on CBS last year.
This year's show was far higher than the all-time low of 4.3 million from the Fox telecast of January 2024, which was delayed by months because of Hollywood’s writers and actors strikes.
The telecast rotates annually between the four broadcast networks.
The Emmys always lag well behind similar awards shows, bringing in less than half the viewers of the Oscars or Grammys and significantly fewer than the Golden Globes.
The show's September spot on the calendar means it always has to contend one way or another with football, the one live event that has kept drawing the same big national ratings it always has.
As is typical when the Emmys are on NBC, the show moved from its usual Sunday spot to Monday, so that NBC could air Sunday Night Football. But that meant competing against Monday Night Football. And it did not have a football game as a lead-in, as some networks do when they air the ceremony.
The show in the streaming and prestige TV era has had to reckon with nominees that bring with them special buzz but not big audiences. In the 1990s, "Seinfeld” and "ER” were drawing massive viewer numbers along with their Emmy tallies in a way that "Widow’s Bay” and "The Pitt” do not.
The last Emmys to reach more than 10 million viewers was 2018, when it drew in 10.2 million. The show had nearly 22 million viewers in 2000, a level it’s unlikely ever to hit again.
