Oscars TV ratings improve – to third worst ever

This year’s Academy Awards with Jimmy Kimmel at the helm drew an average TV audience of 18.7m – and a bigger share of younger viewers

The audience for the 2023 Academy Awards broadcast improved substantially on last year’s unimpressive figures, with a 12% jump on what was the second worst ratings performance in history.

Early ratings from Nielsen, supplied to the Hollywood Reporter, said that the show on ABC attracted an average of 18.7m viewers, compared to 16.6m in 2022. The audience share in the key 18-49 age demographic also improved, from 3.76 last year to 4.0.

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Barbara Walters, pioneering US TV news anchor, dies at 93

First female network news anchor in US achieved a celebrity status on par with the rulers, royalty and entertainers she interviewed

Barbara Walters, the foremost American TV interviewer of her generation and the first woman to lead a US network evening news program, has died aged 93.

Over the course of her 50-year career, Walters was queen of the “get” – a term for securing the first interview with prominent figures making news, whether that was a movie star, politician or figure of criminal notoriety.

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ABC News pulls hosts TJ Holmes and Amy Robach off air after romance revealed

US network says the anchors, who are married to other people, will be temporarily pulled from GMA3 as their romance is ‘an internal and an external distraction’

Two TV anchors working for ABC News in the US have been pulled from air after their workplace romance came to light, amid a storm of public gossip and tabloid coverage.

TJ Holmes and Amy Robach, who have worked as hosts on Good Morning America spinoff talkshow GMA3 since 2020, were revealed to be in a relationship last week after paparazzi photos of the pair were published online. Both Holmes and Robach are married, but after the photos were published a representative for the pair said they had both separated from their spouses and the relationship only began recently.

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Trump and Biden offer dramatically different visions at dueling town halls

Combative president defends his record on coronavirus as Biden calls for far more robust national response

In a split-screen display, US voters heard dramatically different visions from Donald Trump and Joe Biden, his democratic challenger, at dueling town hall-style events on Thursday night, less than three weeks before the election.

Related: Trump refuses to disavow QAnon conspiracy theory during TV debate

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How Trump has berated, insulted and demeaned female reporters – video

Donald Trump abruptly halted a press conference on Monday after being challenged by two female reporters. The US president told Weijia Jiang, an Asian American journalist who works for CBS, to 'ask China' in response to her question over why he sees coronavirus testing as a global competition when more than 80,000 Americans have died. Trump then refused to respond to another White House reporter, CNN's Kaitlan Collins.

Trump has frequently clashed with journalists, but some have suggested a pattern is emerging in the way the president responds to being held to account by members of the press who are women, particularly those of color. Here's a look back at several key exchanges

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Embarrassed TV host caught broadcasting in collar, blazer and … shorts

It’s easy to let standards slip during the lockdown but unlike Will Reeve not all of us see our pantless selves broadcast to the nation

Almost two months into the US shutdown, things are starting to get a little wild in quarantine. Perhaps you’ve stopped brushing your hair or started working in pyjamas. But a Good Morning America reporter took it a step further yesterday – he “went” to work without pants on for a nationally televised broadcast.

I have ARRIVED*

*in the most hilariously mortifying way possible https://t.co/2NQ85QEJVr

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