According to Nielsen, the CBS telecast of the Tony Awards ceremony attracted 4.3 million viewers on Sunday night, marking the second year in a row that viewership has risen.
The slight increase in viewership is a triumph these days at a time when people are starting to flee television. And the fact that the Tonys have grabbed viewer share is part of a trend in which awards shows have stopped bleeding after years of heavy losses. Both the Oscars and the Grammys saw viewership growth this year.
Still, for Tony’s, a relatively niche show compared to more popular shows, Sunday’s ratings meant the third lowest total viewers since records were set. Last year’s ceremony attracted 3.9 million spectators.
The fact that the Tony family actually happened took no small effort. Just a month ago, thousands of film and TV writers have been striking major Hollywood studios since May 2, claiming wages have stagnated despite the boom in streaming production. A televised ceremony was in jeopardy as trade unions representing the Picket the event.
Writers deployed aggressive tactics to damage studios during the strike, making live events broadcast on CBS a potential target. (Screenwriters already managed to sabotage the MTV Movie & TV Awards last month, prompting the cancellation of the live awards ceremony. MTV and CBS share the same parent company, Paramount.)
But a group of playwrights lobbied leaders of the Writers Guild of America, a union that represents writers, arguing that canceling the event would hurt the industry more than it would hurt CBS. The Tony Awards have become an important marketing tool for Broadway, which is still slow to recover from the pandemic. Given the Tonys’ relatively low ratings, the show has always been more of a prestige play than a profit machine for his CBS.
The WGA gave up and ended up with an award ceremony centered around live performances and introductory videos, with no scripts or pre-written parts. The presenters simply introduced themselves and announced the nominees and winners. Impressive writers were yelled at repeatedly throughout the night.
WGA leader explicit approval On Monday morning, the union’s eastern chapter tweeted, “Big congratulations and a big thank you to all the Tony Award winners for joining #WGAstrike in their speeches. Attendees with #WGAstrong pins and no script last night. Thank you to everyone who showed solidarity with the authors at the awards ceremony.”
The unscripted ceremony, hosted by Ariana DeBose, was generally well received. The New York Times theater critic Jesse Green wrote, “To date, Tony’s telecast has been an unconvincing nonsense script and its ‘bumpers’, that is, between the end of a big performance or awards and the commercials that follow.” It was a lot of wasted gaps,” he said. guess what? No script, no nonsense. “
The 2021 Tony Awards ceremony, which was changed due to the pandemic, was broadcast in September, three months later than the traditional mid-June, with a record low of 2.8 million viewers. His most acclaimed Tony Awards in recent years came in 2016, when his “Hamilton”-themed ceremony attracted 8.7 million viewers.
According to Nielsen, the highest rated markets for Sunday telecasts were, in order, New York, West Palm Beach, Fla., and San Francisco.
