Week 29 of the 1972-1973 season started on Monday, March 26th, 1973 and ended on Sunday, April 1st, 1973. The highest-rated program was the “45th Annual Academy Awards” on NBC with a 37.8 Nielsen rating.
Unfortunately, once again, I don’t have access to the complete Nielsen chart for this week. This is a placeholder because I don’t want to skip ahead to the following week and get off schedule. Feel free to speculate about which programs landed in the Bottom 10
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If anyone can provide me with the full Nielsen chart for the week of March 26th-April 1st, 1973 (or just the Bottom 10), I will be very grateful. Please contact me if you can help.
I don’t know what the week’s lowest rated shows were, but want to say how surprised I was to learn that the highest rated program was the 45th Annual Academy Awards.
Wow, times have changed — back in the 1970s watching the Academy Awards was a big deal, but this year the program received its lowest ratings of all time. I was thinking that people may have lost interest in the awards program because acceptance speeches are now often about the winner’s grips, or a plug for some favorite cause. But then I recalled that the 1973 Academy Awards program was probably the one where Marlan Brando refused to accept his award, and sent an activist to make a controversial speech!
This is off topic for the March 26th – April 1st 1973 ratings, but in early September of 1973 I’m sure one of the top rated programs of the week was the Miss America Pageant. Another TV event that was once a really big deal, but now I suspect young people have no clue that there is such a thing as Miss America.
Reading about television programs from 45 years ago is helping me realize how the world has changed since 1973.
Back in 73′ people actually seen most of the films the Academy was rewarding.
After Star Wars there seemed to be a break between the films that people saw and the films the Academy rewarded. The Academy seemed to develop a resentment of big grossing films. Star Wars itself did well at the Oscars with 11 awards, but Empire only got two. The Deer Hunter won after Star Wars. Ordinary People won the Oscar in 1981. It had the 11th highest box office for 1980. Empire had the highest. So there’s clearly something going on.