I mentioned in my Tony Awards review that with the exception of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, none of the musical numbers presented on the broadcast made me want to see the shows. I dunno if this is proof but it comes close: La Cage aux Folles, which won the Tony last Sunday night for Best Revival of a Musical, has just announced it will close later this month. Obviously, there was no stampede to the box office in the last few days.
(On the other hand, this article says that ticket buying for Spelling Bee, Light in the Piazza, Doubt and Spamalot were up. It's just odd to see a show win Best Revival and then close.)
So how were the ratings for the Tony telecast? It depends who you ask…
- "If last year's Tony Awards slumped among viewers 18-49, Sunday night's show positively bombed. It was down 7 percent from last year's already anemic 1.5 adults 18-49 average to a 1.4 for CBS, according to Nielsen overnights." (Media Life Magazine)
- "The bad news for last night's Tony broadcast on CBS was that ratings did not increase from 2004. The good news was that they didn't really shrink either." (BroadwayWorld.com)
- "CBS, which broadcast the three-hour show, was cheered Monday by the overnight ratings, which climbed a bit, attracting 6.62 million viewers, up from 6.46 million last year." (Chicago Tribune)
So they were down, they were unchanged, they were up. However you score it, they still got beaten by a lot of reruns of cop shows.