- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday March 27 2001 11.05 BST
It might have been a very big day for Russell Crowe, Julia Roberts and Steven Soderbergh, but the TV broadcast of Sunday night's Oscars ceremony was watched by a record low audience, according to statistics released yesterday.
The disappointing figures come despite the Academy's crackdown on long-winded speechifying, which led to a dramatic reduction in the length of the annual bash. America's ABC network averaged 42.9m viewers for the Hollywood love-in, a 40% share of household audiences, but down 10% on last year's show and down 4% on the lowest ever audience share, for Out of Africa's best picture win in 1986.
The figures compare with a mere 40.1m viewers for the 1997 ceremony, when The English Patient struck Oscar gold, and 37.2m for Platoon's 1987 victory. But on both those occasions, the percentage share of household audiences was higher than for Gladiator's Sunday night triumph.
ABC ratings expert Jeff Lindsey's explanation for the slump in audience figures was hardly convincing. Lindsay contrasted Sunday's close-run contest with Titanic's highly-rated runaway win in 1998 and concluded, that, "Quite honestly, I think part of [the problem] was there was no clear standout."
