So there are a couple of things getting lost in the narrative of "the ratings are way down":
- The Tonys are usually in JUNE, not September, so they're not normally competing with Sunday Night Football - This Tonycast was not well promoted; *I* knew about it because I follow certain theater-related sites/personalities online, but the average person might not have realized they were on this past weekend (esp. since CBS just aired the Emmys the week prior) - What promotion existed didn't exactly make it clear what was happening on which part of the broadcast, whether the P+ portion would include performances, etc. - The ceremony itself was honoring a Broadway season that ended in April 2020, and honestly it was a chore to even remember what was eligible to be nominated (which...not a lot, because COVID shut down a whole bunch of productions before they played their first performance) I'm not saying the ratings would have been DRAMATICALLY better had the awards run in June 2020, but an oddball Sunday in September certainly didn't help. All told, I actually thought the show was pretty good, apart from some TV direction miscues (what was with the camerawork during the In Memoriam segment?). On Monday, September 27, 2021 at 4:59:07 PM UTC-4 Dave Sikula wrote: > > According to Playbill, ratings were down significantly. > > While I thought it was a fabulous show -- and it usually is the best of > this ilk -- in checking my social media Sunday night and Monday morning, > there was a combination of frustration and downright anger about the > streaming half of the show, that boiled down to two camps: "Why can't I see > this on my teevee?" and "I don't want to subscribe to Paramount Plus!" > > I thought about explaining the whole "get a free subscription and cancel > it right afterward" concept, but most of the posts I saw seemed to come > from people for whom that idea was the equivalent of understanding particle > physics. There was also a healthy chunk of folks who didn't even know where > and when it was on. > > Left mostly unsaid was Paramount/Viacom's questionable decision to air the > first two hours (where all but three of the awards were given) live online, > but leave the second half broadcast-only for most of the country, so that > anyone not in the eastern time zone had to wait as long as three hours to > continue the show. > > My takeaway was that Paramount alienated far more people than they > attracted. > > --Dave Sikula > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/c2bac5f4-4512-453f-a502-339149ec64d2n%40googlegroups.com.
