Sunday night's Golden Globes on CBS averaged 9.3 million viewers, down slightly from last year, according to Nielsen.
The good news for the Globes is that, despite being on life support until recently, they managed to stop the bleeding at the awards ceremony. Last year's ceremony drew 9.4 million viewers when it first aired on CBS.
But its ratings are nowhere near the 20 million viewers the Globes attracted in the 2010s. Due to the pandemic and a series of self-inflicted scandals, ratings for the Globes plummeted and the event all but disappeared.
Groves had some tough competition on Sunday as well. NBC aired the final regular-season game of Sunday Night Football between the Detroit Lions and the Minnesota Vikings, which drew more than 25 million viewers, Nielsen said.
This award show's slight decline stands in contrast to the overall increase in viewership for other major live events. As with the Grammys, the Oscars have seen an increase in viewership for three years in a row. (Both will be back on the test soon; the Grammys will air on CBS on February 2nd, and the Oscars will air again on ABC on March 2nd.) September Emmy Awards viewership numbers also increased.
Critics praised Sunday's telecast. New York Times critic Jason Zinoman praised the show's “brilliant monologue” by host Nikki Glazer, while Variety said the show had returned to its “chaotic glory.” Reviews were much kinder than last year's broadcast, when critics slammed the event and the show's host, Jo Koy.
On Sunday, Globe voters awarded awards to a number of films, but “The Brutalist'' and “Emilia Perez'' took top honors. The television awards were relatively modest, with “Shogun'', “Hax'' and “Baby Reindeer'' taking home top honors, similar to September's Emmy Awards.
Winners and presenters on Sunday avoided third-rail political topics, such as the incoming Trump administration, in a departure from previous Globe Awards ceremonies.
Nielsen's ratings were not made available to the public on Monday, as is normal procedure after large live events. Networks typically order provisional Nielsen ratings for a fee the day after a live event and then release those numbers on their own (and try to positively influence them).
But CBS's parent company, Paramount, has been embroiled in a months-long contract dispute with Nielsen, the industry's long-trusted provider of ratings data. CBS no longer has access to Nielsen's ratings numbers, and Nielsen provided final numbers to existing customers on Tuesday morning.
On Monday night, CBS and the event's producer, Dick Clark Productions, released data measured by Nielsen rival VideoAmp. CBS and Dick Clark Productions said 10.1 million people watched the Globes, citing VideoAmp and proprietary data.
