Grammys Fall To New Ratings Demo Low, While Viewership Steady With 2018 – Update

UPDATED, 1:21 PM: The final numbers for the 61st annual Grammy Awards are in, and they include an all-time demo low for music’s biggest night. The live CBS show drew a 5.6 rating in the adult 18-49 demographic, eclipsed year’s demo low.

As for viewership, Sunday’s Grammys is pretty much even with last year’s show, pulling in 19.9 million total viewers, compared with 2018’s 19.8M. So as Led Zeppelin might sing, the song somewhat remained the same in sets of eyeballs.

PREVIOUSLY, 6:09 AM: Michelle Obama kicked things off last night at the 61st Grammy Awards after some “Havana” sizzle, then Lady Gaga continued her Taylor Swift-shocked victory look tour and Ariana Grande won but very clearly wasn’t in the house.

Additionally, during the nearly four-hour CBS show, Drake showed up in a rare award-show appearance but got cut off, K-Pop superstars BTS made some history, Jennifer Lopez took center stage for a Motown tribute with Smokey Robinson, and Diana Ross slayed, as she supremely does.

Back in Los Angeles after last year’s stint in New York City, this year’s Alicia Keys-hosted ceremony also saw a Dolly Parton tribute plus a Prince-tinged and seemingly Klaus Nomi-inspired showstopper by Janelle Monáe. Back on in February after last year’s January airing, last night’s Grammys handed out some hardware too.

There were some big wins by Cardi B, A Star Is Born Gaga, Kasey Musgraves and Childish Gambino aka Atlanta creator Donald Glover too, plus that ’70s rocker-in-chief Jimmy Carter snagged his third Grammy and Spotify got mentioned a lot.

However, when it comes to the ratings, the song pretty much stayed the same. Last night’s primetime show snagged a 12.8/22 in metered market ratings.

Facing the competition of the midseason return of The Walking Dead on cable, the 2019 Grammys bucked the recent awards-show ratings trend to increase a tiny bit from last year’s James Corden-hosted bash. (By “a tiny bit,” I mean less than 1% in the metered markets over the 60th annual Grammy Awards, but up is up – at least for now, in the early metrics.)

The January 28, 2018 show, which saw a cameo by Hillary Clinton and more than its fair share of Donald Trump cage-rattling, went on to score a 5.9/21 rating among adults 18-49 and 19.81 million viewers, that metric the worst that the CBS-aired show had seen since 2009, when the telecast snared an audience of 19.04 million viewers. Though they didn’t go head to head with a returning TWD, the 2018 Grammys were also the lowest rated ever among the valued 18-49 demographic.

We’ll update with more numbers from the Kacey Musgraves- and Childish Gambino-led Grammys plus the rest of the Big 4 night later on. A night that saw Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them making its network debut on NBC, I might counter-programmingly add.

And yes, the mentioned country singer and the multi-medium Glover were the top winners of the night with four Grammys each.

UPDATE, 8:45 AM: They are still sweeping up on many levels from last night’s Grammy Awards at LA’s Staples Center and the final ratings numbers haven’t been sung yet, but music’s biggest night is not looking so big.

In fast affiliate results, the CBS-broadcasted 61^st annual Grammy Awards has hit the sour notes of a 5.0/19 rating among adults 18-49 and 17.95 million viewers.

Now, that’s all likely to be adjusted in the final numbers but right now the Alicia Keys fronted three-hour plus running ceremony is down almost 8% in the key demo from the fast affiliates of last year’s record low James Corden host Grammys. It’s a bit of a flip move when you look at the total audience in this early round of ratings. The 17.95 million that watched last night the awards shows is up 1.7% from the viewership that the 60^th annual Grammys had in the fast affiliates last year.

Back in February and the City of Angels after a move to January and NYC in 2018, this year’s Grammys was up against the just over one-hour Season 9 midseason premiere of AMC’s The Walking Dead – which could have taken a bite out of those demo numbers.

Right now, it looks like last night’s Grammys are on the way to being the lowest rated ever as they fall beneath last year’s demo action.

Then again, with very little serious competition among the Big 4, CBS easily won the primetime battle with a 4.4/17 rating and 16.02 million watching. The only other originals on the broadcast nets were Fox’s animation offerings of The Simpsons (0.7/3), Bob’s Burgers (0.7.3) and Family Guy (0.8/3). All three dropped to season lows in the 18-49. NBC had Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (0.5/2), which did OK for the Comcast-owned net for a Sunday movie, all things considered.