TV Rating: American Music Awards fall below 50% new record
2 min read
The 2020 American Music Awards had a larger rating than last year and a drop in total audience, both on record.
Last night’s awards ceremony, which featured “Empire” star Taraji P. Henson hosted and Taylor Swift, The Weekend, and Dan + Shaw emerged as the big winners, with an average rating of 0.9 among 18-49 adults and a total audience of about 3.8 million. This represents an audience of a 50% rating reduction and a 43% loss. For comparison, AMAs dropped just 4% in the year before the rating column in previous years and actually gained nearly 200,000 viewers since 2018. The show’s “America’s Funniest Home Videos” lead-in has a 0.5 rating and just under 4 million viewers.
Of course it should be noted that historically small AMA numbers are not particularly surprising given that the awards show is shaking the board almost too late as a result. For example, earlier this year the Oscars dropped by 20%, the Emmy by about 9%, the ACM awards by more than 30%, the Billboard Music Awards by 55%, and the CMA by 30%.
It is also worth noting that the AMAs faced stiff competition from “” strong performances on NBC. A thrilling game between the reigning Super Bowl champions Kansas City Chiefs and the Las Vegas Raiders averaged 4.1 ratings and a total of about 15.2 million spectators.
On top of CBS, “NCIS: Los Angeles” provided a 0.6 rating and 5.6 million total viewers, followed by “NCIS: New Orleans” with 0.5 and 4.8 million. “Min0 Minutes” kicked off the night with a 0.9 and a total of over 9 million viewers.
Fox’s animation dominance lineup was given a simple boost by the NFL overrun, as “The Simpsons” had a 1.5 rating and 4.7 million viewers. “Bless the Hearts” came in at a 0.7 rating and had just over 2 million viewers, followed by “Bob’s Burger” and “Family Guy” with both a 0.6 rating and about 1.6 million pairs of eyebrows.
Univision had an average rating of 0.0 throughout the night on Sunday, with “Tu Kara Mein Suena” having a rating of 0.4 and a viewership of 1.4 million. Telemundo has advertised two movie offers, with an overall average of 0.3.
News episodes of “Local”, “Pandora” and “The Postpost” have a 0.1 rating for CW.
