The 69th annual Primetime Emmy Awards was a groundbreaking night, but it didn't lead to any record-breaking ratings.
From Veep's Julia Louis-Dreyfus surpassing the previous mark for the most Emmys won by a performer for the same role to Lena Waithe of Master of None becoming the first black woman to win the award for comedy writing to Donald Glover becoming the first black person to win an Emmy for comedy TV directing, the night was filled with historic moments, but unfortunately, not many people tuned in to watch it all unfold. With 11.38 million viewers, last night's show was practically even with the numbers (11.4 million viewers) put up by the 2016 ceremony. For the 18-49 audience, the 69th annual Primetime Emmys had a 2.5 rating, a 10 percent decline from last year's show.
There are a couple factors which could have led to the poor Emmys viewership numbers last night. On Sunday, PBS debuted the new Ken Burns documentary series The Vietnam War. And of course, there's the juggernaut known as the NFL, which had two games sandwiched between the Emmys broadcast. The first 30 minutes of last night's ceremony was forced to compete with the ending of the game between the Dallas Cowboys and Denver Broncos. Shortly after that contest concluded, the Atlanta Falcons and Green Bay Packers got underway in their new brand new Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Once again, former White House press secretary Sean Spicer has lied to us about the numbers.
