Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus and Billie Eilish Help Grammys Reach Its Largest Audience Since 2020

US singer-songwriter Miley Cyrus arrives for the 66th Annual Grammy Awards at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles on February 4, 2024. (AFP)
US singer-songwriter Miley Cyrus arrives for the 66th Annual Grammy Awards at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles on February 4, 2024. (AFP)
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Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus and Billie Eilish Help Grammys Reach Its Largest Audience Since 2020

US singer-songwriter Miley Cyrus arrives for the 66th Annual Grammy Awards at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles on February 4, 2024. (AFP)
US singer-songwriter Miley Cyrus arrives for the 66th Annual Grammy Awards at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles on February 4, 2024. (AFP)

An average of 16.9 million viewers tuned in to see performances by Miley Cyrus and Billie Eilish and watch Taylor Swift make history at the Grammy Awards on Sunday, the largest audience for the telecast in four years and another consecutive annual increase for a show that is recovering from its pandemic declines.

Ratings were up 34% on Sunday across CBS, Paramount+ and other digital platforms from last year, and with delayed watching included was expected to amass over 17 million viewers. The telecast peaked with 18.25 million viewers during the in memorium segment, with performances by Stevie Wonder, Annie Lennox, Jon Batiste and Fantasia Barrino.

The numbers Sunday easily beat the 12.4 million people who tuned in to watch Harry Styles, Lizzo and Bad Bunny perform during the show in 2023, along with a tribute to 50 years of rap history.

That’s another year of growth seen under host Trevor Noah, who has hosted since 2021. Live viewership was 8.8 million in 2021 and 8.9 million in 2022. The numbers this year are closer to pre-pandemic levels: Music’s showcase night was seen by 18.7 million people in 2020.

The upward trajectory is in stark contrast to the fate of the Emmy Awards earlier this year: That telecast on Fox reached a record low audience of 4.3 million viewers.

This year, Grammy viewers watched Miley Cyrus powerfully belt out her megahit “Flowers”, which won record of the year, and Billie Eilish’s gentle piano ballad from “Barbie,” “What Was I Made For?”, which was crowned song of the year. The album “Midnights” earned Swift her fourth career Grammy for album of the year, a record.

Live television viewership has declined across-the-board over the past few years, with pro football one of the few events to buck the trend.



Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt Reach Divorce Settlement after 8 Years

(FILES) Writer-director-producer-actress Angelina Jolie Pitt (L) and actor-producer Brad Pitt arrive for the opening night gala premiere of Universal Pictures' "By the Sea" during AFI FEST 2015 presented by Audi at the TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood, California, on November 5, 2015. (Photo by MARK RALSTON / AFP)
(FILES) Writer-director-producer-actress Angelina Jolie Pitt (L) and actor-producer Brad Pitt arrive for the opening night gala premiere of Universal Pictures' "By the Sea" during AFI FEST 2015 presented by Audi at the TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood, California, on November 5, 2015. (Photo by MARK RALSTON / AFP)
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Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt Reach Divorce Settlement after 8 Years

(FILES) Writer-director-producer-actress Angelina Jolie Pitt (L) and actor-producer Brad Pitt arrive for the opening night gala premiere of Universal Pictures' "By the Sea" during AFI FEST 2015 presented by Audi at the TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood, California, on November 5, 2015. (Photo by MARK RALSTON / AFP)
(FILES) Writer-director-producer-actress Angelina Jolie Pitt (L) and actor-producer Brad Pitt arrive for the opening night gala premiere of Universal Pictures' "By the Sea" during AFI FEST 2015 presented by Audi at the TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood, California, on November 5, 2015. (Photo by MARK RALSTON / AFP)

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have reached a divorce settlement, her lawyer said Monday, bringing an apparent end to one of the longest and most contentious divorces in Hollywood history.
Jolie's attorney James Simon confirmed to The Associated Press that the couple had come to a deal. News of the settlement was first reported by People magazine.
“More than eight years ago, Angelina filed for divorce from Mr. Pitt,” Simon said in a statement. “She and the children left all of the properties they had shared with Mr. Pitt, and since that time she has focused on finding peace and healing for their family. This is just one part of a long ongoing process that started eight years ago. Frankly, Angelina is exhausted, but she is relieved this one part is over.”
No court documents have been filed yet, and a judge will need to sign off on the agreement. An email late Monday night to Pitt's attorney seeking comment was not immediately answered.
Jolie, 49, and Pitt, 61, were among Hollywood’s most prominent pairings for 12 years, two of them as a married couple. The Oscar winners have six children together.
Jolie filed for divorce in 2016, after a private jet flight from Europe during which she said Pitt was abusive toward her and their children. The FBI and the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services investigated Pitt's actions on the flight and deemed no action needed to be taken against him.
A judge in 2019 declared them divorced and single, but the splitting of assets and child custody needed to be separately settled.
Soon after, a private judge that the two had hired to handle the case reached a decision that included equal custody of their children, but Jolie filed to have him removed from the case over an unreported conflict of interest. An appeals court agreed, the judge was removed, and the couple had to start the process over.
During the long divorce fight, four of the couple's six children became adults, negating the need for a custody agreement for them. The only two that remain minors are 16-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne. In June, one of their daughters, then known as Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, successfully petitioned to remove Pitt's name from hers.
Their other children are 23-year-old Maddox, 21-year-old Pax and 19-year-old Zahara.
No details of the agreement were immediately revealed, and the couple's use of the private judge — an increasingly common move among splitting celebrities in recent years — has kept the proceedings largely under wraps. There have been no official court actions in the case in nearly a year, and no indication that the two had been nearing an agreement.
Some details on their disputes, however, have been revealed through a separate lawsuit filed by Pitt in which he alleged Jolie reneged on an agreement that she would sell him her half of a French winery the two owned together. Jolie instead sold her part of the winery, Chateau Miraval, to the Tenute del Mondo wine group, a subsidiary of the Stoli Group., which Pitt said was a “vindictive” move that ruined a private space that had been a second home.
Jolie's attorneys said the winery sale agreement broke down over Pitt's demand that as part of the deal she sign a wide-ranging non-disclosure agreement about him. In court documents, she called that an attempt to cover up his physical abuse of her, which she said turned toward the children on the 2016 flight.
Along with the federal and L.A. County officials, the initial judge in the case heard testimony on the allegations before deciding to give Pitt equal custody of the children.
It's not clear how the divorce agreement will affect the winery lawsuit.
Publicly, both Pitt and Jolie have been extremely tight-lipped on everything surrounding their split, despite robust promotional tours and many media appearances for various projects.
Pitt said in a 2017 interview with GQ that he had had a drinking problem at the time of the plane incident and the split, but had since become sober and was going to therapy. He has not defended his behavior on the family flight.
Jolie has also declined to make any public statements about the family issues or the divorce, though she has sought a broader examination and airing of his behavior by the courts in both the divorce and winery cases.