Emmys Hit Lowest-Ever Ratings With Just 6.1 Million Viewers

The Emmys hit their lowest-ever ratings Sunday night, as Nielsen‘s Live+SameDay fast nationals for reveal the awards ceremony had just 6.1 million viewers, and a 1.2 rating in adults aged 18-49.

This is a drop of 12% over last year, which marked the previous all-time low, and represented a 25% dropoff in the key demographic, according to Variety.

Perhaps it was host Jimmy Kimmel’s “Black Lives Matter” chant – which comedian Stephen Crowder ‘manipulated’ with clips of Kimmel’s old blackface routines.

Last year marked a historic low for TV’s top awards show, as a host-less ceremony on Fox delivered a massive 33% decline from the year before, scoring a 1.6 rating and drawing only 6.9 million viewers. For comparison, the previous four ceremonies before that were watched by 10.2 million viewers, 11.4 million viewers (in both 2017 and 2016) and 11.9 million viewers. That 6.9 million figure was roughly one third of the total pairs of eyeballs the Emmys drew as recently as 2013. –Variety

That said, Variety notes that Sunday night’s ceremony had competition from NBC‘s “Sunday Night Football” as well as the NBA Playoffs on the East Coast, which aired in the primetime window for the first time.

What’s more, there was no red carpet lead-in this year, which “likely played some part in producing these low numbers.”