Oscars 2022 ratings barely recover, but show was dead before Will Smith knockout

nypost.com:

last year’s historically low ratings, but cratered in civility and grace.Strike another death knell for the once-almighty ratings grabber.Tinseltown likes to think of itself as the center of the moral and pop culture universe, but c’mon — that was ridiculous, another slap in the face for what’s supposed to be (but rarely is) “Hollywood’s Shining Moment,” with television along for the ride on a gravy train that’s gone off the rails and crashed into a wall of indifference.Sunday night’s Oscarcast on ABC is the second-lowest-rated Oscars ever with around 15 million viewers, up from last year’s abysmal 10.4 million viewing audience (akin to an episode of “Yellowstone” on cable’s Paramount Network).

The mediocre ratings bump will instill in nervous network execs the hope that this dinosaur can be saved from extinction — instead of seeing the obvious writing on the (video) wall that it’s too late for that.This year’s annual self-congratulatory festivities were produced by Will Packer, who can thank another Will (Smith) for perhaps the most controversial moment in the ceremony’s 93-year history … if only anyone was watching it live on ABC, instead of scurrying to their computers late Sunday night/ Monday morning to see what all the social media ruckus was about.There’s no doubt that Smith’s WTF?

open-palmed smack of Oscars presenter Chris Rock after Rock joked about Jada Pinkett Smith’s alopecia (“Jada, can’t wait for ‘G.I.

Jane 2′”) will be parsed and analyzed under a sociological microscope — accompanied by the requisite hand-wringing — until next year’s Academy Awards.There’s a chance that Smith could be fined by the FCC for his profanity-laced tirade launched at Rock once he sat back down.