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Source: Phil McCarten/AMPAS

Ke Huy Quan and Michelle Yeoh embrace at the 2023 Oscars

Sunday’s 95th Academy Awards viewership reached 18.7million after the second consecutive yearly increase, gaining 12% on last year when 16.7million tuned in.

The 2023 telecast on ABC also saw a 5% increase in adult viewers in the 18-49 demographic earning a 4.0 rating compared to 3.8 in 2022, Nielsen reported on Monday.

This year’s Oscars rank as the most-viewed awards show on any network since the 2020 Oscars. It ended up well ahead of The Grammys on CBS (12.5million on February 5) and last autumn’s Emmys on NBC (5.9million on September 12, 2022) and compared favourably in terms of ratings against 2.9 and 1.1, respectively.

Despite the gains the Oscars telecast remains the third least-watched show on record after 10.4million in 2021 and 16.6million last year. Viewership reached 29.6million in 2019 and 32.9million in 2017.

Turning to social media engagement, the Oscars earned 27.4million total social interactions on the night across Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube per Talkwalker Social Content Ratings. It ranked as the top entertainment programme of the year to date in terms of social video consumption, driving 60.6million video views.

The show was also the top worldwide trending topic on Twitter during the broadcast and was the most tweeted and the longest trending hashtag on Sunday night.

ABC’s broadcast of the 95th Oscars had 1.8million views of the ASL (American Sign Language) live stream, marking a jump of 443% over last year’s telecast (331,000).