Viewership for Sunday’s 57th annual Grammy Awards ceremony on CBS was the lowest since 2009, according to live-plus-same-day time adjusted fast national ratings released Monday by Nielsen.
An average of 25.3 million viewers watched the three-hour, 39-minute ceremony from Staples Center, the lowest since the 2009 ceremony that averaged 19.05 million viewers.
Viewership was down 11.3 percent from last year’s ceremony, which averaged 28.51 million viewers, the Grammys’ the second largest audience since 1994.
One reason for the viewership decline was the midseason premiere of the AMC horror series “The Walking Dead,” that averaged 15.6 million viewers opposite the second hour of the Grammy telecast in the Eastern and Pacific time zones.
Despite the decline, the audience was the second largest for an entertainment program during the 2014-15 television season, trailing only NBC’s post-Super Bowl episode of “The Blacklist,” which averaged 25.7 million viewers.
Final national figures are scheduled to be released Tuesday, but are not expected to change substantially from the preliminary figures.
The Grammy Awards were the biggest social entertainment program of the television season, with more than 13.4 million tweets, according to Nielsen Social.
