WITHOUT a host or a great deal of pizzazz, ABC’s telecast of the Academy Awards reached its smallest audience ever of 23.6 million viewers.

The Nielsen company said Sunday night’s audience was down 20 percent from a year ago. The previous low-water mark for the Oscars was the 26.5 million people who watched in 2018.

The Academy Awards honored “Parasite” as best picture. While that made history as the first-ever foreign language film to win the top award, it was clearly not an audience-grabber.

“It was too predictable, too white and too boring,” said Tom O’Neil, founder of Goldderby.com, a website devoted to awards show news.

For much of the 2000s, the Oscars hovered between 35 and 45 million viewers, often the second most-watched television program of the year after the Super Bowl. As recently as 2015, the show reached 37.3 million viewers. (SD-Agencies)