CMA Awards Show Earns Biggest Audience in Four Years

Wednesday’s three-hour broadcast of “The 47th Annual CMA Awards” boasted the program’s biggest audience in four years with 16.6 million viewers. This represents the CMA Awards’ second-most-watched broadcast in eight years – since 2009 and 2005, respectively.

ABC dominated the night, winning each half-hour and outdelivering runner-up CBS (9.3 million and 2.2/6) by 7.3 million viewers and by 114% in Adults 18-49. In fact, with the broad-appealing country music gala, the network swept the evening, finishing No. 1 in viewers, all key adult demos (AD18-34/AD18-49/AD25-54), teens 12-17 and kids 2-11. In viewers and young adults, it was ABC’s first victory on the opening Wednesday of any sweep in six years – since November 2007.

In addition, the CMA Awards was Wednesday’s No. 1 most social TV program with 1,667,680 tweets and 2.8 tweets per unique user.

With this news, the CMA Awards reclaims the prize as the top-rated country music awards show, beating out the Academy of Country Music Awards’ 15.5 million viewers last April.