Oscars strike gold with highest ratings since 2005 - TV show

ABC's telecast of the Academy Awards Sunday night was watched by more than 41.3 million viewers.

That's the best for an Oscarcast in five years - since 2005, when "Million Dollar Baby" was the big winner.

"That's a huge number," said Brad Adgate, senior vice president at Horizon Media. He said this was "an extraordinary accomplishment" considering all the media options - computers, cell phones, iPods - in use today.

The Academy Awards ratings add to a string of better-than-expected performances this year for major events.

Consider this: Last month's Super Bowl became the most-watched event of any kind in TV history, with 106 million viewers.

The Golden Globe Awards were up 14% from the previous year. The People's Choice Awards were up 15% year-to-year. And the Grammy Awards were up 35.8% over last year.

The strong showing for big events comes after consistent talk of audience fragmentation on the set - and off-screen to computers and other devices.

Adgate suggests that part of the increase is because the productions have gotten better. He also thinks the recession is having an impact.

"People are staying home and maybe not going out as much," he said. "This is changing the way people watch high-profile events."

Locally, 43% of televisions turned on were tuned to WABC/Ch. 7's telecast of the Academy Awards.

This even though a dispute between Ch.7 and Cablevision blocked approximately 3.1 million households from seeing the show's first 15 minutes.

It is difficult to say whether the dispute had an impact, positive or negative, on viewing.

The ratings also don't include viewing done out of the home - in bars, for instance.

Ratings maven Steve Sternberg, who runs the Sternberg Report, noted the Academy Awards audience may actually be higher than what Nielsen has reported. The ratings firm counts only through the last commercial break, which came 27 minutes before the end of the program. That means the audience for the final portion, when Best Picture was revealed, wasn't counted.

"It does seem that people are in the mood for big events on television again," Sternberg said. "It might have something to do with the economy, it might have something to do with social networks, and it might be people have been missing big events."

Sternberg, like a lot of those watching the Oscars, was on Twitter during the show.

"Twitter creates a community experience that didn't exist before these social networks," he said. "That may have caused people to pay more attention."

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