Oscars audience slumps despite epic Best Picture blunder

The Oscars ceremony this year may be one of the most talked about in history - but it certainly wasn’t the most watched.

The 32.9 million viewers who tuned in for Hollywood’s big night was the show’s smallest audience since 2008.

It represented a slump of more than a million from last year, according to Nielsen, the company that checks the size of TV audiences in the United States.

The grandstand ending - when the Best Picture Oscar was initially handed to the wrong film - dominated social media channels yesterday with millions checking in to see what happened.

But many people had already gone to bed when it screened live, or hadn’t watched it at all.

Analysts claim one reason for the drop-off could be because the president’s supporters refused to watch Mr Trump being bashed by the notoriously left-leaning Hollywood crowd.

They feared a repeat of the kind of Trump bashing that dominated the Golden Globes ceremony in January. Meryl Streep was the most prominent, taking Mr Trump to task for his policies.

Some Trump supporters went so far as to launch a campaign to boycott the Oscars to express their protest of the 'limousine liberals' who don't represent them.

Host Jimmy Kimmel took aim first, trashing the president throughout the night, starting with his opening monologue.

He joked that the Academy Awards were being watching across the globe 'in more than 225 countries that now hate us'.

"I want to say thank you to President Trump," joked Kimmel. "Remember last year when it seemed the Oscars were racist? That's gone, thanks to him."

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