Sean Spicer Lies About Emmys Audience Size
by EG
Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer made a surprise cameo on Sunday night's Emmy broadcast. There he made fun of the fact that his first act as press secretary was to lie about the size of Donald Trump's inauguration crowd by making the same bold statement about the Emmy audience. Art ended up imitating life when Spicer's joke about the Emmys turned out to be just as untrue as his claim about the inauguration.
The Emmy Awards are becoming a tougher sell for viewers. For another year, initial ratings for the TV awards were down — though the total viewership ultimately just bested the lows from 2016.
The updated haul have Sunday's kudocast averaging 11.4 million viewers for the night, up incrementally from the 2016 show. That's good news after an overnight 8.2 rating among metered market households had it down another 2 percent from the previous year. That means that the final tally for the 2017 Emmys, hosted by Stephen Colbert on CBS, avoids the all-time low 11.3 million viewers that tuned in last year.
In the key demo of adults 18-49, this year's show did bottom out, slipping 10 percent from a 2.7 rating to a 2.5 rating. Overnight ratings are naturally below those of NBC's Sunday Night Football, which took a 12.6 overnight rating among households.
Emmy viewership has been dipping steadily over recent years, especially compared to the stronger awards shows such as the Golden Globes, the Academy Awards and the Grammys. The Emmys hit new lows in 2015 and again in 2016, despite relatively strong performances in 2013 and 2014.
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.
Did you think Sean Spicer's Emmy joke was funny, or do you think it was making light of serious misdeeds he committed while working at the White House? Let us know in the comment section below.