Nielsen numbers from Sunday night's Oscars telecast are out -- and ABC probably isn't very happy. The number of viewers dropped after a three-year run of increases, probably because "Birdman" is pretty overrated.
But for those of us who get sniffy about the Oscars (while slobbering all over elections), there's a spot of good news. Nielsen numbers also show that the premiere annual event in politics -- the State of the Union address -- is only slightly less popular among viewers. And while (as noted before) the Super Bowl is still way, way, way, way* more popular than either one, people care more about the state of the nation than the Grammys. Just as Ben Franklin would have wanted.
Until 2011, the SOTU usually beat the Oscars, but the speech's slide has become more dramatic. In 2012, the Grammys beat both, but that was because Whitney Houston had died the night before.
So that's good news! The dorky thing over which we obsess (in addition to proper grammatical phrasing) is about as popular as the dorky thing over which less dorky people obsess! That's nice. And when there's a new president, the SOTU Nielsens tend to go up. So expect a good 2017.
Oh, as for the repeated claims that the Oscars draw 1 billion viewers? Yeah, no, unless 963 million of those viewers were outside the United States. But as fans of politics, who are we to object to a little hyperactive self-promotion?
* The editor truncated this at four "way"s.
Philip Bump writes about politics for The Fix. He is based in New York City.
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