How the 2024 CMT Music Awards Compared to Other Recent Awards Shows

Ratings for the 2024 CMT Music Awards were flat, but that has to be considered a big win for a show up against heavy competition.

Sunday night's (April 7) show was No. 1 on broadcast television, but likely third overall that day. The Women's NCAA college basketball championship between University of Iowa and University of South Carolina brought 18 million people to ESPN earlier in the day.

There was also a record-setting night for one of sports' biggest and fastest-rising brands.

• 5.38 million people watched the CMT Awards, good for second-highest broadcast program on Sunday (60 Minutes).
• In 2023, 5.43 million people tuned in.
• Both years topped American Idol, which went from 5.06 to 4.36 million year-to-year (per SpoilerTV).

Related: 2024 CMT Music Awards - 5 Things You Missed

The 2023 CMA Awards drew an average of 6.6 million in November. After the 2023 ACM Awards, the Academy boasted 7.7 million viewers on Prime Video. Just over 4.3 million watched the inaugural People's Choice Country Awards on NBC last September.

All-genre shows do significantly better: The 2024 Grammys brought 16.9 million to TV screens.

The big winner from Sunday was likely WWE wrestling, although since the show was on Peacock, numbers aren't available. SI shares that Nights 1 and 2 of Wrestlemania were up 41 percent from a record-setting 2023.

The WWE YouTube channel saw its most-viewed day in history with more than 67 million views in 24 hours. There were also 660 million social media views. For context, in 2023 the ACM Awards shared that there were 60 million video views across their social media platforms.