The Ratings of Emmy Awards Sink To an All-Time Low

And they thought following the 'no-host' trend of Oscars is going to get them improved numbers like the Oscars. For the uninitiated, we are talking about the recently telecast 71st Primetime Emmy Awards. The ceremony was telecast on Fox and it was expected to hit the same high that Oscars did back in March.

But even though the decision of not having a host was appreciated, that hasn't resulted in better numbers for the show. According to The Hollywood Reporter, for the second year in a row, the Emmy Awards are looking at an all-time low in the ratings.

Preliminary numbers for Fox's broadcast Sunday night have the awards at a 5.7 household rating in metered markets. That's off by 23 percent from the 7.4 for the 2018 Emmys, which aired on NBC on a Monday night (to avoid conflicts with the network's NFL contract).

Last year's Emmys ended up with 10.21 million viewers. If the declines in the preliminary numbers carry through to the finals, the audience could end up around 8 million viewers, which would be the first time since at least 1990 that they've gone under 10 million viewers.

The last time Fox aired the Emmys, in 2015, the ceremony drew what was then an all-time low of 11.87 million viewers.

The slide for the Emmys is also easily the biggest decline among the major televised awards shows in 2019. The Oscars improved by more than 10 percent in both total viewers and adults 18-49, and the Golden Globes and Grammys were fairly steady year to year.