Another year of the annual Grammy Awards is in the books.
The late, great John Prine won Grammys for Best American Roots Songs and Best American Roots Performance with his very last song ever recorded, “I Remember Everything.” We also saw Miranda’s Wildcard album win Best Country Album and the bluegrass pickin’ prodigy Billy Strings win Best Bluegrass Album.
We also saw Justin Bieber win a country music Grammy, but that’s another story…
And despite a few good wins in the country music world, this year’s show was actually a flop. In fact, it was a colossal flop.
According to Variety, TV ratings were down at an astounding amount, with a 53% drop from 2020’s show. After garnering 18.7 million views back in 2020, Sunday night’s show scrounged a lowly 8.8 million views. Prior to 2021, the record-low was 17 million in 2006, and that ceremony didn’t even have a host.
And it’s not just the Grammys, every single popular music awards ceremony has seen a drop in ratings since the pandemic. I don’t necessarily think this is a direct correlation with the pandemic, but I think people are finding different ways to interact with these kinds of shows. Live-streaming is at an all-time high, and specific parts of the event can be easily found on various social media platforms. Do people really want to sit down for the entire broadcast when they can find the highlights on Twitter? Is it something deeper? Does the show just kind of suck these days?
Pandemic or no pandemic, it’s obvious that they need to change something to keep viewers engaged.
Oh, and I might know one other reason…
Miranda kicked ass though…
