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TwitterAMA ratings hit highest note since '02
A big gathering of stars at the American Music Awards Sunday led to the show's biggest audience in seven years.The awards show, which featured performances from Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, Daughtry, Carrie Underwood and others, averaged 14.2 million viewers Sunday night. That was the biggest tune-in for the show since 16 million watched in 2002, and by far the largest audience for the AMAs since they moved from January to November five years ago (the previous November best was 12.9 million viewers in 2004).
The show also outdrew this year's Emmys in both viewers (14.2 million vs. 13.5 million) and adults 18-49 (5.5 vs. 5.1).
The AMAs and the Country Music Association Awards both gave ABC a pretty decent November sweeps bounce. The CMAs brought in close to 17 million viewers on Nov. 11 -- way above the network's Wednesday-night average -- while Sunday's awards outperformed the average of ABC's regular programming by about 1.9 million viewers.
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Eh, that's because a lot of people thought they were watching America's Funniest Home Videos, what with all the clutzes on parade.
It's a sign that ABC's regular programming isn't doing all that great when a relatively low-rated award show beats it.
It's also a sign of how irrelevant the Emmys made themselves (perhaps by giving too many awards to people and shows with little talent and big PR budgets) that it does even worse (keeping in mind that every year the number of available viewers goes up!)