This year’s Oscars airs at a new time—and could draw more viewers

This is shaping up to be a big year for the Oscars, in part because it will start a little earlier. ABC announced that the 96th Academy Awards ceremony, which takes place Sunday in Los Angeles and will be hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, will air an hour early for the first time ever in Oscars history. 

Instead of its traditional time slot of 8 p.m. ET, the broadcast will begin at 7 p.m. ET and 4 p.m. on the West Coast. (The official preshow kicks off half an hour before the ceremony at 6:30 p.m. ET and 3:30 p.m. on the West Coast.) 

ABC did not respond to Fast Company’s request for comment, but there are likely a few reasons why the Academy Awards and ABC would want to air the ceremony earlier. Sources told The Hollywood Reporter that the decision behind pushing the telecast’s start time by an hour was to make sure it finishes up within prime-time hours on the East Coast.  

The ceremony is usually around three to three and a half hours long, and in the past cable networks have tried to keep the telecast within that time frame without much success. For instance, the Academy previously experimented with handing out certain awards ahead of the broadcast. However, some telecasts still managed to slip past the 11 p.m. hour, a time when viewership tends to see a drop-off, especially on the East Coast.

The 2024 Academy Awards also happens to align with daylight saving time this year—when people lose an hour of sleep—so there’s a chance the network doesn’t want to be responsible for making audiences feel even more tired when heading to work the following morning.

So far this year, other award shows have smashed records. The 81st Golden Globes telecast on CBS that took place in January averaged 9.4 million viewers, up more than 50% from the previous year, according to Nielsen. Meanwhile, last month’s 66th Grammy Awards telecast, which also aired on CBS, brought in 16.9 million viewers, up 34% from last year. The Critics Choice Awards on the CW network also saw a bump in viewership with more than a million viewers tuning in, up 14% from last year.

In 2023, the 95th Academy Awards ceremony, which was also hosted by Kimmel and had a runtime of more than three and a half hours, reached an average of nearly 20 million viewers, up 8% from the year before, making it the highest-rated show in three years. Following the infamous moment when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the 94th Academy Awards the year prior, the audience jumped by 600,000 viewers. Still, the ratings have yet to get back to pre-pandemic levels, and the last time the ceremony saw more than 40 million viewers was in 2014.

But this year the Oscars seem to be banking on last summer’s Barbenheimer mania to grab people’s attention. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer leads the way with 13 nominations—and despite some initial backlash toward the Academy for snubbing Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie in the directing and acting categories, Barbie is nominated for a total of eight Oscars. It was confirmed that Ryan Gosling would perform “I’m Just Ken,” which is nominated for Best Song, complete with 65 male backup dancers. Billie Eilish and her brother, Finneas O’Connell, will perform “What Was I Made For?” from the film, in a move that could draw interest from the singer-songwriter’s younger fan base.

Plus, host Kimmel has become a popular choice for the awards show. This will be his fourth time hosting the Oscars after hosting last year’s ceremony as well as the 2017 and 2018 editions. 

This year’s broadcast will be followed by a new special episode of ABC’s massively popular sitcom Abbott Elementary, which usually airs on Wednesdays, and the offering could get the show’s fans to tune into the Oscars telecast as well.