Little change in ratings for annual Emmy Awards; 13.5M tune in for television’s big night

Emmys ratings on par with last year, up slightly

NEW YORK — The ratings report doesn’t have particularly good or bad news for the annual Emmy Awards. It has just about the same news.

The Nielsen Co. said Monday that an estimated 13.5 million viewers watched television’s big night on Sunday, hosted by Jimmy Fallon. That’s up slightly from last year’s audience of 13.47 million. Among viewers aged 18 to 49, this year’s rating was down by a tenth of a point from 2009.

The show’s timing seemed to have little impact. The Emmys are shown by one of the four top broadcast networks on a rotating basis, usually the Sunday before the mid-September start of the fall season. NBC moved the awards up three weeks this year to avoid interfering with the start of NFL season. What viewers the network might have lost due to people being on vacation it apparently gained because of a relative lack of competition.

It was the biggest Emmys audience in four years, the last time it was aired by NBC.