Academy Reveals Date for 2019 Oscars

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the ABC Television Network have announced the date for the 91st Oscars.

The 2019 Oscars, the award show’s 91st ceremony, will air live on Feb. 24, 2019, according to announcement released by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the ABC Television Network, Variety reports.

The announcement also included other key dates.

Nominations voting will open on Monday, Jan. 7, 2019 and once again last one week, closing on Monday, Jan. 14, 2019. Nominations will then be announced on Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2019.

Final voting, which also runs for a full week, will open on Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2019 and close on Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2019, just ahead of the presentation’s live broadcast on Feb. 24.

The 90th Academy Awards on Sunday, March 4, fell to an all-time low, marking the least-watched Oscars ceremony with only 26.5 million viewers tuning in, representing a 19 percent drop from last year’s award show.

The nearly four-hour-long ABC telecast, which was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel for the second year in a row, drew in an 18.9 overnight rating, which was down 16 percent from the 2017 ceremony’s 22.4 overnight rating. In the final analysis, the 2017 ceremony notched a 9.1 rating in the key 18-49 demographic and earned 32.9 million viewers. ABC has not released the 18-49 demographic data for Sunday’s show and Nielsen will not publish the data until Tuesday.

The Oscars have not had more than 40 million viewers since the 2014 ceremony, hosted by Ellen DeGeneres, when 43.7 million viewers tuned in. In fact, only three of the last 10 Oscar ceremonies have had over 40 million viewers.

One major negative for this year’s show was the lack of box office power from the Best Picture nominees. Only Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk earned more than $100 million. The film that ended up winning Best Picture was Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water, which has grossed $57 million domestically so far.

However, that was better than last year’s Moonlight, which only made $28 million. Del Toro’s film is also the highest-grossing Best Picture winner from the past five years, highlighting the Oscars’ growing love for indie films.

The Oscars were just the latest awards show to see a dip in the ratings. The Golden Globes earned a 5.0 18-49 rating and 19 million viewers in January, an 11 percent drop in the demographic and 5 percent drop in total viewers, Variety reported.

Also in January, the Grammys collapsed, earning an all-time low 5.9 rating in the key demographic. It had 19.81 million viewers, its worst number since 2008 and a 24 percent drop from last year.