I can’t believe I’m writing a post about how the CMA Awards ratings hit an all-time low…
I’m kidding…
It’s not actually a surprise in any way, shape, or form that the numbers dipped even lower than they did during the 2020 broadcast. It was the same old generic, unexciting, listless show that has unfortunately become the standard over the recent years.
We could get into a million different reasons as to why this happened, but it’s not just the CMAs who are dealing with low interest from fans. Awards shows of all kinds are experiencing these same problems when it comes to people actually caring about tuning in to their broadcast.
According to the early Nielson numbers, The CMA Awards had 6.56 million viewers for the 2021 show, which actually did win in the overall primetime spot, but was down compared to the 6.82 million viewers they had in 2020. Stay tuned for any adjustments as they’re always common with live events.
To be fair, 2020 saw a much larger drop for the CMA’s, as the show lost a massive 40% in viewership compared to 2019. So, it was more or less on par with last year’s numbers, but still… record low is never a good sign, especially considering that last year’s show was right in the heart of the pandemic.
But still, over time, the numbers have been falling off a cliff:
Back in 2014, the show garnered a whopping 16.2 million viewers. It fell to 13.6 million viewers in 2015, and 12.5 million viewers in 2016. By 2019, it had fallen all the way down to 11.3 million viewers, then another steep dive last year, down to 6.8 million viewers.
The ACM awards found themselves in a similar situation earlier this year, after they also had all-time low numbers in terms of viewership, which resulted in CBS declining to renew their contract with the organization. It will now be streamed on Amazon prime in 2022, but clearly, that’s unlikely to help the numbers in any substantial way at this point.
Of course, a lot of it can also be attributed to the fact that they often nominate, and even more often, actually give these awards out to the wrong people:
Ya know what, though, I say we just make it a three hour Chris Stapleton concert next year and see how the ratings do then:
