The bulk of the Tony Awards on Sunday ran on Paramount+. The few awards presented on CBS, as part of a special called Broadway’s Back, didn’t draw much of an audience.
The two-hour special — primarily a celebration of Broadway’s return after 18 months of shuttered shows, due to the COVID-19 pandemic — averaged 2.62 million viewers Sunday night, according to time zone-adjusted fast national ratings from Nielsen (which may change some in the final numbers Tuesday morning).
The audience for Broadway’s Back was barely half that of the last Tony Awards in 2019 (5.4 million), though the comparison isn’t exactly like to like. The Tonys typically air in June, opposite far less competition than Sunday’s show faced — which included a tightly contested Sunday Night Football game on NBC and season premieres of series on ABC and Fox.
The bulk of the Tonys also streamed exclusively on Paramount+, with only the awards for best play, best revival of a play and best musical presented during the CBS special. Per usual with streaming platforms, viewer figures for the Paramount+ Tonys presentation (and its simulcast of Broadway’s Back) are being treated as a state secret.
Preliminary figures show Sunday Night Football with a big lead over everything else in primetime Sunday (as usual); this story will be updated with final ratings on Tuesday.
Bookmark THR.com/Ratings for more ratings news and numbers.
Source: Hollywood
