The 2016 Grammys was another long and arduous affair with loads of performances, some better than others, awkward moments and of course a little controversy mixed in. The biggest night in music has always been a big draw for TV, but the numbers have been flagging in recent years and Monday night's telecast, including online viewership was the lowest since 2009.
According to Neilson, which tracks television viewership among other things, about 24.95 million people tune in to see Kendrick Lamar, Lady Gaga and The Eagles perform on CBS, while Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift and others all took home awards. This number presumably includes online viewers after Nielson said that it would include those numbers in its total.
The 24.95 million is a 1.4 percent drop from last year's 25.3 million and the lowest since 2009. It is still quite a bit larger than the number in 2009 when just over 19 million watched the award show.
There were some issues with the CBS live stream, which afflicted some individuals trying to view the show online, but that shouldn't have deterred too many people.
One worrying aspect of these numbers is that the Grammys is scoring low with young people. It only got a 7.7 rating with the age group 18-49, meaning only 7.7 percent of those watching TV saw the Grammys instead of other programming that night like Better Call Saul, The Bachelor and The X-Files. The Grammys was able to easily beat out those other shows however.
The change from Sunday to Monday could have had an impact on viewership, though CBS executives felt as though the long weekend for President's Day was worth the move from Valentine's Day to the following Monday night.
According to Deadline, this move to Monday was a net 184 percent jump in viewership for the same Monday night a year ago.
The downward trend is being felt across all the major award shows. The Oscars, which pulls in the largest audience annually, was down 16 percent in 2015 to 36.6 million viewers according to Fortune. The Grammys remains the second highest viewed award show despite its issues and flagging audience.
