Ratings Appear to Drop Slightly

Ratings for this year’s Academy Awards appear to have been slightly lower than they were a year ago, based on preliminary viewing estimates from ratings service Nielsen Media Research.

ABC projects that roughly 41.8 million people were watching the telecast at any given moment, which would represent a 3% decline versus 2001 and the lowest Oscar rating since 1997, when “The English Patient” was named best picture.

Final Nielsen data for Sunday’s broadcast will be issued today. ABC estimates that 77 million people watched at least a few minutes of the telecast, also a slight decline from last year.

The overall rating doubtless wasn’t helped by the 4-hour, 15-minute running time, which ranks as the longest Oscar telecast on record.

ABC and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which presents the awards, moved the Oscars from Monday to Sunday nights in 1999 and advanced the start time by a half-hour to 5:30 p.m. Pacific time, 8:30 p.m. Eastern. Still, Sunday’s ceremony nevertheless ran until 12:45 a.m. on the East Coast, the most populous time zone.

Locally, the Oscars averaged a 35.1 rating, meaning that 35.1% of the 5.3 million homes in the Los Angeles viewing area were watching the awards at any given moment.

Despite the show’s duration, the rating was somewhat lower in New York, where the ceremony averaged a 33.3 rating. In both cities, more than half of all TV sets in use were tuned to the telecast during those hours.

Los Angeles ranked fourth among major cities monitored by Nielsen in terms of Oscar ratings, trailing Chicago, San Francisco and West Palm Beach, Fla.