The Dodgers were on. I like the Dodgers. I don't much care one way or the other about the Atlanta Falcons (sorry, boss), but I love to see the Pukers getting their heads handed to them, and that's what the Falcons were doing.
So even if you've got two TVs on the same wall, it's hard to think of a reason you'd want to take up space on one of them to watch a bunch of self-admiring actors giving themselves made-up awards. Add to this the fact that almost everyone who gets up on stage starts bashing Donald Trump, and you have to think people will be tuning out left and right.
The Handmaid’s Tale, Veep, Big Little Lies, This Is Us’Sterling K Brown, Atlanta’s Donald Glover and The Night Of’s Riz Ahmed were bathed in Emmy glory last night but the final numbers find the show itself matching its worst audience numbers ever. In the key demo, the Stephen Colbert hosted ceremony had it worst result ever.
With 11.38 million viewers tuning into the 69th annual Primetime Emmy Awards is even with last year’s show on ABC, which was the all-time low. The 2016 show was down 5% from the 2015 show, which was the previous low. Among adults 18-49, last night’s Emmys snagged a 2.5 rating. That’s down 10% from the Jimmy Kimmel hosted show of last year, the previous demo low.
Full of repeated swipes at Donald Trump from Colbert and almost everyone else on-stage last night, the 2017 Emmys also faced the well-followed Atlanta Falcons and Green Bay Packers over on Sunday Night Football. Kicked off with a dubious Sean # cameo, the awards show also was up against around 30 minutes of the Denver Broncos’ ratings strong pounding of the Dallas Cowboy that spilled over in to FOX’s primetime. While unlikely to have had a big impact on the Emmys numbers, Sunday was the debut of Ken Burns’ new The Vietnam War documentary series on PBS too.
Clearly in deep with the NFL on Sundays, NBC dealt with its own particular Emmy issue when it broadcast the show in 2014 by moving the whole thing to a Monday and side stepping the NFL. Down from the 2013 show, the 2014 Emmys was the last time the broadcast did better than 12 million viewers, with a total audience of 15.59 million tuning in.
I actually don't think they rant about politics because they think the audience wants it. They don't care if the audience wants it or not. They do it to preen for each other, because in Hollywood your sense or moral seriousness is now measured by how stridently you bash Trump.
The choice of Colbert as host pretty much assured things were going to go in this direction, but it probably happens anyway because the celebrities feel almost duty-bound to get up there and thrash away. If you don't, you're an insufficiently serious defender of . . . I'm not even sure what. The "resistance," I guess - whatever it is they think they're resisting.
They used to bash Bush, of course, but I think they were more circumspect then because they realized opposition to Bush was largely partisan and they did have their larger appeal to think about. Now? In the Hollywood bubble, it's impossible to imagine there's anyone in the world who likes Trump. Somehow the guy got elected with absolutely no votes whatsoever. No wonder they think "Russian hacking" is what put him in office.
The funny thing is that a lot of them know Trump personally, because he was very much involved with television before he ran for president, and Trump and the industry seemed to co-exist fine until he became president, and specifically a Republican president.
Anyway, I suppose left-wingers love it, although you have to wonder if even some of them are thinking enough already when they tune in to see TV awards and they have to listen to this all night instead. As for just about everyone else? Relentless Trump hate is what CNN and MSNBC are for. You can turn that on any time. Why would anyone watch this when it's not that interesting even without the politics, and there are a lot of other choices?
Turns out not many did. Think they'll learn a lesson from that?
Me neither.
