GOLDEN GLOBES RATINGS : 2021

LOS ANGELES : The television audience for Hollywood's virtual Golden Globes ceremony on Sunday fell sharply from last year's event, according to a preliminary estimates on Monday.

Rating data reported by The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline showed that only about 5.4 million Americans watched the three-hour telecast on NBC. The figures do not reflect viewing on the US West Coast, but they nevertheless reflect a drop of about 60% from early from early audience estimates for the 2020 show.

NBC has yet to release any figures and did not return a request for comment.

In 2020, 18.3 million Americans, the smallest audience in eight years, watched the Golden Globes ceremony on television, according to final Nielsen data.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, Sunday's show, hosted by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, was a mostly virtual affair with no red carpet and with celebrities taking part via video links from their homes and other locations.

It was also overshadowed by a controversy over the lack of Black members within the Hollywood's Foreign Press Association [HFPA], which decides on the winners.

Drama Nomadland and comedy Borat Subsequent Movie film won the top prizes on Sunday. Reviewers slammed the show, which usually takes place as a boozy gala dinner in Beverly Hills and is one of  the more popular award telecasts.

Variety called it ''a lazy, clueless ceremony that likely convinced many viewers to change the channel.''

Britain's Daily Telegraph it as a ''shambolic hellscape of Zoom ineptitude'' that it said boded ill for the scars in April. [Reuters]