So much for all the hoopla.
Ratings for Sunday’s Golden Globes were down slightly from last year — despite all the pre-show hype surrounding host Ricky Gervais.
The three-hour telecast averaged 16.8 million viewers on NBC, down from last year’s 17 million viewers — even though Gervais pledged to be even more snarky following his verbal takedowns last year of Hollywood stars including Robert Downey Jr. and Johnny Depp.
Gervais, by comparison, was relatively tame Sunday night, firing off a few choice one-liners early in the broadcast — including barbs aimed at Eddie Murphy and Madonna — but otherwise he acted like the typical awards-show host.
Sunday’s telecast, which was also down from last year in the advertister-coveted demo of adults 18-49 (5.0 from a 5.2), was still enough to lead NBC to an easy prime-time victory.
Final viewership numbers for Sunday’s Giants-Packers playoff game — a 37-20 Big Blue victory — were not available yesterday, but preliminary estimates measuring the game’s final hour (7-8 p.m.) show it pulled in a huge 40 million viewers on Fox.
That, in turn, gave “The Simpsons” a solid boost (to 15.7 million viewers), with the new animated series, “Napoleon Dynamite,” also scoring big (9.5 million viewers), according to preliminary Nielsen numbers.