More than 40 million Americans tuned into watch the 85th Annual Academy Awards. It was the Oscars largest audience in three years.
Reuters reports that last year’s show, which was hosted by Billy Crystal, brought in 39.3 million people.
Seth MacFarlane bested Crystal’s numbers by about a million viewers. Nielsen reports that 40.3 million people tuned into watch Argo win best picture last night.
In addition to its TV audience, the Oscars also saw an increase in online activity. The website Oscar.com has attracted 15.8 million people since the Oscar nominees were announced in early January. ABC reports that web traffic grew by 28% since 2012.
Oscars.com wasn’t the only website to see a lot of traffic. Twitter was flooded with messages throughout the award show. Close to 9 million tweets were sent out about the #Oscars2013. Adele’s performance of “Skyfall,” Jennifer Lawrence’s win for Best Actress , and Argo’s win for Best Picture were the most talked about moments of the night.
Entertainment Weekly reports that the 85th Annual Academy Awards was the second most-watched Oscars since 2005 when Chris Rock hosted and Million Dollar Baby won the best picture award.
This year’s Oscars wasn’t the most watched of all-time but it did easily beat out the other award telecasts this year. The Golden Globes drew 20.6 million viewers and the Grammys brought in close to 12 million viewers.
And that is that!!!! Thank you all for an amazing #Oscars !!! twitter.com/TheAcademy/sta…
— The Academy (@TheAcademy) February 25, 2013