Viewer ratings of this years Oscar ceremony hit a low in the ratings. ABC brought back Jimmy Kimmel for second turn as Academy Awards host but the network numbers reveal a loss of 6.4 million total viewers from his first go-around (which had 32.9 million viewers). Thats a huge decline of 19.5 percent. This years ceremony showed an average audience of 26.5 million total viewers, the smallest tune-in for an Oscars in Nielsen’s electronically recorded history, which dates back to the early 1990s.