Maren Morris presents the Tour of the Year award to Taylor Swift onstage CR: Frank Micelotta/FOX/PictureGroup
After three years on cable, the iHeartRadio Music Awards moved to FOX for the 2019 ceremony.
The inaugural FOX iteration drew a fairly modest audience.
According to fast national data posted by Showbuzz, Thursday’s show drew a 0.9 adults 18-49 rating. It averaged 3.03 million overall viewers.
On the one hand, the numbers top those drawn by last year’s ceremony. Airing across three Turner cable networks (TNT, TBS, and Tru), last year’s show drew a combined 0.72 adults 18-49 rating and 1.69 million overall viewers.
On the other hand, ratings standards are higher for a show airing on a major broadcast network (as opposed to cable channels). Numbers for this year’s show pale in comparison to those of the 2014 (1.7 rating, 5.4 million) and 2015 (1.7, 5.2 million) ceremonies, which aired on NBC.
As it also aired on Thursday (all other iterations of the show aired on Sunday), the 2014 edition has another layer of relevance as a comparison point. Granted, insofar as the TV landscape has changed significantly in the past five years, there is also a clear drawback to that comparison.
The 2019 adults 18-49 rating, moreover, trails that of the 2017 Turner cable ceremony (1.15, 2.9 million across the three networks). The 2016 cable ceremony drew a 0.88 rating and 2.12 million.
After six iterations, it is clear that the iHeartRadio Music Awards ceremony has little chance of ever becoming a major live+same-day ratings draw. It does, however, attract big names and generate solid online chatter.