The Golden Globes averaged 9.4 million viewers on Sunday night time, in line with Nielsen, a rise over the 2023 ceremony rankings however nonetheless considerably decrease than the viewers totals of only a few years in the past.

Until 2020, the Globes often drew 17 million to twenty million viewers. In 2019, the Globes was narrowing the viewership hole with the Oscars so considerably that it appeared the telecast may develop into the most-watched awards present.

And then catastrophe struck.

First got here the pandemic, which disadvantaged the 2021 Globes of its common booze-soaked freewheeling ceremony, sending the ratings tumbling. Then got here a scandal for the organization that administers the Globes, which led NBC to refuse to broadcast the 2022 ceremony. Last 12 months, NBC gave the Globes a one-year likelihood, and the audience figures were still low: simply over six million folks watched.

For months, there was hypothesis {that a} streaming service like Netflix or Amazon may choose up the rights to the Globes. That didn’t occur. In November, CBS picked up the rights for an additional one-year association. (In an announcement asserting the deal, George Cheeks, the CBS president, mentioned that the Globes may assist promote scripted programming that had been delayed by final 12 months’s strikes in Hollywood. Those reveals premiere subsequent month.)

CBS introduced a bunch — a comparatively unknown Jo Koy — just a few days earlier than Christmas.

Reviews for Mr. Koy had been harsh, with critics taking specific situation with the comic’s weird mid-monologue pivot, through which he blamed different writers for a few of his uninteresting jokes. “Yo, I got the gig 10 days ago, you want a perfect monologue?” he mentioned. “Yo, shut up. You’re kidding me, right? Slow down. I wrote some of these — and they’re the ones you’re laughing at.”

Critics weren’t form to the telecast, both. Vanity Fair called it a “near-total disaster” and a critic at The Hollywood Reporter said it was “the dullest awards show” he had ever seen. The Ankler likened it to the “RC Cola of award shows.”