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.

While the uptick is good news for the Oscars and its umbrella organisation the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Ampas), the numbers are still the third lowest ever recorded as the Oscars struggle to recover from the disastrous 2021 edition, whose final ratings closed at 10.4m.

This year’s edition saw the return of a traditional style host in Jimmy Kimmel, a relatively popular winner in multiverse comedy Everything Everywhere All at Once, and a largely controversy-free evening. With the 2021 and 2022 shows affected by the pandemic, the nearest point of comparison is the 2020 event, which managed 23.6m.

Other awards show broadcasts have seen mixed results: the Grammys achieved 12.6m (a 31% rise), while the Emmys dropped to 5.9m, its lowest ever. The highest Oscars audience in its history was for the 1998 edition, which saw Titanic win best picture, in front of of 57m TV viewers.