It appears the heyday of the awards show is a thing of the past. Since 2017, when President Donald Trump took office, the various shows have become little more than platforms for wealthy, liberal elites to tell regular Americans how to live, vote, and think. Naturally, folks don’t tune into these shows for political discourse. Rather, people want to see their favorite celebrities and performers and perhaps forget about what’s going on in the world for a few hours.
As a result, ratings have suffered as people have tuned out. Perhaps the last outstanding awards show featured Ricky Gervais at the 2020 Golden Globes. The creator of “The Office” proceeded to roast and offend most in attendance in one of the funniest, most honest performances in award show history. Naturally, he hasn’t been invited backA big part of the issue in terms of ratings is the wokeness of the broadcast. Instead of featuring comedians like Gervais and Kevin Hart, who was fired because of old Tweets that were dug up before he had the chance actually to host the show, viewers have instead had to sit through the likes of Trevor Noah from the failed “Daily Show” of Comedy Central.Speaking of Trevor Noah, he hosted the most recent iteration of the Grammy Awards last Sunday night. The 66th version of the awards perhaps featured some of the best Grammy moments in recent memory, but sadly, not very many people noticed. This year’s version drew a reported 16.9 million viewers across CBS, Paramount+, and other platforms.
Certainly, that is a lot of viewers, but for the biggest night in music, the numbers are concerning. The legacy media are touting the numbers as strong, and they admittedly are a 34 percent improvement over 2023, but still pale in comparison to the number of viewers the show routinely garnered pre-President Trump. The ratings were the highest since 2020, but just two years ago, the broadcast hit an all-time low of 8.93 million viewers.
It took surprise performances from reclusive stars to juice interest this year. Tracy Chapman made just her third on-stage appearance since 2009 when she sang her iconic hit “Fast Car” with country sensation Luke Combs. News of her appearance was announced mere days before the broadcast, undoubtedly drawing eyeballs out of curiosity.
Joni Mitchell, the legendary folk star, also performed as the theme of the night, leaned away from the absurdly inappropriate performances of songs like WAP by Megan Thee Stallion from past years. Perhaps more adults with kids in the room felt safer tuning in, knowing there wouldn’t be mostly naked women gyrating and mimicking sex acts on the stage. The presence of Taylor Swift also certainly didn’t hurt. Swift is the biggest ticket in entertainment right now, and fans likely tuned in to get a glimpse of the “Anti-hero” singer. She also, however, acted in a rude way to Celine Dion when presented with her award, sparking an online controversy. Watch that here:https://rumble.com/v4biltf-taylor-swift-torched-for-lack-of-manners-during-grammy-acceptance.htmlThe media will portray this year’s rating as good, and they are, in fact, up; however, they likely will never reach the heights pre-Trump. The former President broke many in Hollywood, and the music industry, and folks have been so put off by the politics and virtue-signaling that many will never come back.
