Oscars 2017 ratings fall once again: Do we blame politics, movies, or Jimmy Kimmel?

The good news coming into today is that Hollywood did not explode over the terrible gaffe that happened at the end of last night’s Oscars telecast. The bad news is that even with that, the show’s ratings still found a way to slide.

Last night’s show, at least in the preliminary numbers, drew a 8.7 rating in the 18-49 demographic and just over 31 million viewers. In terms of household ratings, the 22.4 rating and 36 share is the lowest rating for the show in nine years. What’s going on here? If we were putting the Oscars 2017 ratings under a microscope, there are a few things that we’d most likely discover.

Politics – Obviously, this is an extremely divided country at the moment, and we feel like people out there who lean extremely conservative didn’t like the idea of watching a show where their views were not represented. This is probably overly-inflated somewhat by the press (we imagine that there was a fairly small pool of diehard Republican Oscars fans in the first place), but it’s still a factor.

The nominees – This is probably the biggest one. While La La Land grossed more than $100 million, there still wasn’t that huge, super-blockbuster Best Picture nominee who the average viewer was watching and cheering on. Having a number of big commercial properties in the running gives people a vested interest.

Jimmy Kimmel – We see this running both ways. While him hosting probably convinced some of his late-night fans to watch, he wouldn’t bring in many new viewers since they already knew what to expect from him. Meanwhile, imagine the ratings if someone like a Dave Chappelle were to host the Oscars, or even a Jon Stewart at this point in his career. (Stewart’s done the gig before, but it was prior to him leaving The Daily Show and being such a commodity for interviews.)

In the end, one other simple factor may just be natural erosion. With more and more viewing options, not everyone is going to the movies anymore. Therefore, the Oscars probably took a bit of a hit because of that.

Did you watch the Oscars, and if you didn’t, what was the reason why? Share below!

Meanwhile, be sure to visit the link here if you didn’t see the Warren Beatty – Faye Dunaway gaffe from the end of the show. (Photo: Oscars.)