THB #449 Sidebar: Some Recent HFPA History

In 2004, The Golden Globes had its highest rating ever, 26.8 million viewers. The Academy had 43.5 million. It was actually an improvement on the year before, when the difference between the 2 shows was just 12.9 million viewers. But the AMPAS paranoia really started kicking in.

That is when we would discuss the chicken and the egg. Moving forward, only 1 Oscar show (2014) would be as high (.1m higher, actually) as that 2004 rating. Meanwhile, The Globes cracked the 20 million viewer mark only 1 more time in the same period, like Oscar, in 2014.

Then, the competition between the shows got worse for The Academy. Since 2015, The Globes have generated more than half the viewers that Oscar generated, which was a change. Oscar fell under 40 million viewers, never to return, in 2015. It dropped under 30 million in 2018, bounced back to 30 million in 2019, and has been under 20 million in the last 3 years.

Then in 2021, The Golden Globes got cancelled by the LA Times. But not before COVID canc…