Conan O'Brien's Oscars and the Ratings Picture

The 97th Academy Awards broadcast on 2 March 2025 from the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. Conan O’Brien hosted. Nielsen reported the final audience at approximately 19.7 million total viewers across ABC, slightly up on the 2024 figure (19.5 million under Jimmy Kimmel) and the second consecutive year of modest growth after a multi-year decline.

The Academy and ABC both issued positive communications. Trade outlets credited the ceremony’s pacing and O’Brien’s hosting for the result. Whether the credit is deserved, and what the underlying ratings picture actually looks like, is worth separating from the marketing language.

The number in context

Against the recent past, the number is a recovery. The 2021 ceremony, held under pandemic conditions, reached only 10.4 million viewers. The 2022 ceremony recovered to 16.6 million, aided by the Will Smith incident. The 2023 ceremony drew 18.7 million. The 2024 ceremony rose to 19.5 million. The 2025 number is thus effectively flat against the prior year, not a significant increase.

Against the longer history, the 19.7 million remains well below the pre-2018 baseline. The 2014 broadcast drew 43 million. The 2000 broadcast drew 46 million. The decline has been roughly continuous, tracking the general decline of live-event broadcast television in the United States.

What actually drove this year’s number

Three factors contributed.

First, the nominee field. Wicked and Dune: Part Two, both strong commercial performers, were nominated for Best Picture. Their presence meant a meaningful share of the general moviegoing audience had a direct rooting interest in the telecast. The 2021 ceremony, by contrast, featured a nominee field in which no Best Picture nominee had grossed above 50 million domestically.

Second, the awards race was genuinely undecided in several categories. The Best Picture race between Anora and The Brutalist was close through the precursor circuit. Open races generate more tune-in than races with presumed winners, a pattern the data supports across the last fifteen years.

Third, ABC and the Academy made format changes that reduced the telecast’s running time and improved its pacing. The ceremony ran approximately three hours thirty minutes, down from the four-hour-plus running times common in the late 2010s.

The host question

O’Brien’s hosting, by consensus reporting, was well received. The monologue, the musical number, and his management of the ceremony’s flow drew positive coverage. There was no viral moment comparable to the 2022 Will Smith slap.

Whether the absence of a viral moment matters for the ratings is the question. O’Brien’s hosting was competent and likable. It did not generate the kind of break-through social-media event that drives tune-in for the following year. The Academy is choosing between two industry theories: that professional competence and good pacing is what the ceremony needs, or that the telecast requires a host who can produce a cultural moment.

The commercial envelope

Disney and the Academy finalised a ten-year extension of the broadcast deal in March 2024, running the ceremony on ABC and Disney+ through 2034. ABC’s advertising rates for the telecast, as reported by Variety, averaged around 1.7 million dollars for a thirty-second spot, down from the roughly 2 million dollar peak reached in the late 2010s. Total advertising revenue, by industry estimates, came in around 135 million dollars.

The Academy made the ceremony available on Disney+ for the first time this year, streaming simultaneously with the broadcast. Disney-ABC reported that the streaming audience added approximately 2 million viewers to the overall reach, though how much of that was incremental rather than shifted from broadcast viewing has not been disclosed.

Over the next five years, the headline Oscars ratings figure will almost certainly be a combined linear-plus-streaming number.

What to conclude

The 2025 Oscars ratings are better than the recent lows, comparable to last year, and well below the ceremony’s pre-2018 baseline. The telecast, under O’Brien’s hosting, performed within the range expected given the nominee field and the format changes. The hosting itself was not the decisive factor. It did not need to be.

The longer-term business position is stable but narrower than it once was. The Academy and Disney-ABC are operating within a reduced commercial envelope. Whether the next five years see stabilisation hold, or see decline resume, will depend on factors the Academy controls only partially: the commercial performance of award-season films, the viability of live broadcast audiences, and the year-by-year decisions about format and host.

The number gives the Academy another twelve months of room to work in. It does not settle the longer question.