Oscar ratings get bump from 'Barbie,' 'Oppenheimer' films, but numbers aren’t lofty

The 96th Academy Awards got a slight increase in viewership this year, largely credited to "Oppenheimer" and "Barbie" being released last summer.

But that upward trend comes from an all-time low during the pandemic, and it is up just 4% from last year’s estimated audience of 18.7 million, according to numbers released Monday by ABC.

The Academy experimented with starting this year’s show an hour earlier, and for the first time in years had many nominations for huge hit movies that viewers had actually seen: "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer."