February 01, 2010

By By Ann Donahue, L.A.

An average of 25.8 million viewers watched the 52nd Grammy Awards on CBS last night, an increase of 32% over last year's show, making it the most watched since 2004, according to tvbythenumbers.com.

It was by far the most watched show of the night, beating all competitors in the 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. primetime slots. The closet show in terms of total viewers was "Desperate Housewives" on ABC from 9 p.m. -- 10 p.m., which averaged just over 11 million viewers.

In 2009, 19 million people watched the Grammys; in 2008, the average viewership was 17.1 million.

The ratings surge comes at a time when all entertainment awards shows are struggling to stave off viewership decline. The 2008 Oscars hit an all-time low before rebounding 13% to average 36.3 million viewers in 2009. The 2009 Emmy Awards narrowly avoided being the least watched Emmys on record. The telecast averaged 12.33 million, which put it just ahead of the 1990 telecast, the least-watched, which averaged 12.3 million.

In the case of the Grammys, the jump in ratings can be attributed to a number of trends: the artists nominated for the big three categories -- album of the year, record of the year and song of the year -- saw significant sales success in 2009. In awards circles, this is known as the "Titanic" effect in homage to 1998, the year when "Titanic" became the top-grossing box office movie of all time and won best picture -- and ratings for the Academy Awards reached the all-time high of 57.2 million. The theory is that the more familiar the television audience is with the nominees, the more invested they are in seeing them do well during awards season.

With 2009?s bestselling artist Taylor Swift a leading contender Sunday night -- and her track record of sweeping the CMAs in November which sent that awards show?s ratings up to an average of 16.8 million from 15.9 million the previous year -- it is likely that Swift fans made a point to tune in to CBS. (It?s worth noting that Swift fans are very loyal when it comes to watching her on TV; her appearance on ?Saturday Night Live? in November tallied 6.8 million viewers -- tying the season high set in October by host Ryan Reynolds and musical guest Lady Gaga.)

In fact, the number of female nominees last night may have also served to increase the ratings; the viewers demographics of award shows skew heavily female -- advertisers refer to the Academy Awards as ?the Super Bowl for women? -- and it is likely that female audiences tuned in to see Swift, Beyonce and Lady Gaga.

To help boost awareness of this year's Grammy Awards, the Recording Academy launched aggressive social media intiatives and brought on advertising agency Chiat Day to lead their campaign.

By the half-hour, here are the number of viewers for the Grammys:
8 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.: 25.4 million
8:30 p.m. - 9 p.m.: 28.3 million
9 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.: 27.3 million
9:30 p.m. - 10 p.m.: 28.2 million
10 p.m. - 10:30 p.m.: 27.1 million
10:30 p.m. - 11 p.m.: 23.2 million

Additional reporting by James Hibberd, the Hollywood Reporter

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