Social media explodes during Oscars; TV viewership doesn’t

By DAVID BAUDER
AP Media Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Will Smith’s violent slap of Chris Rock during the Academy Awards ceremony had no appreciable difference on the size of the ABC broadcast’s television audience. But social media is a different story. ABC said there were some 22.7 million social media interactions during the telecast, the most ever on Oscars night and more than double what it was in 2021. The network says Oscar videos notched 16 million views on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, also a record for the show. Overall viewership for the Academy Awards was up 58 percent from 2021, a diminished pandemic-era ceremony. But it was down 30 percent from the Oscars telecast of 2020.