Grammy audience is lowest in 9 years

The CBS telecast of the 60th Grammy Awards was watched Sunday by 19.8 million viewers, a staggering 24 percent decline from last year’s show.

The live program from Madison Square Garden in New York, with “The Late Late Show” host James Corden as emcee, drew its smallest audience since 2009, according to Nielsen data.

The rating among viewers ages 18 to 49 — the group important to most advertisers — hit an all-time low, with 5.9 percent of that audience tuned in compared with 7.8 percent last year.

The decline in viewership is the latest indication of how awards shows are grappling with dwindling audiences as younger people watch highlights online. Other big awards events such as the Oscars and the Golden Globes have seen losses among younger viewers in recent years as well.

Some viewers may have been turned off by the highly political and often somber nature of the evening, which included speeches and performances recognizing the Time’s Up movement and criticizing the Trump administration’s stance on immigration.

A tribute to victims of last year’s mass shooting at a country music concert in Las Vegas and two numbers saluting Broadway — included to note the Grammy ceremony’s return to New York after a 15-year absence — contributed to a preponderance of slow ballads on the program.

Awards shows have seen audience declines as younger viewers seek out the highlights of the telecasts in clips online instead of sitting through an entire program on traditional TV. It’s also likely that more viewers watched a live stream of the program on CBS All Access, the service that enables subscribers to watch the network’s programming online.