Sharpton Takes Credit for Oscars Ratings Plunge

The Rev. Al Sharpton took a victory lap Monday after it was announced ratings for the 88th Academy Awards hit an 8-year low.

Commenting on news of the ceremony’s abysmal ratings, Sharpton took partial credit, and said the poor showing should “send a message to the Academy and to movie studio heads.”

Variety reported in a statement through his National Action Network, Sharpton said that the decline in ratings is “heartening to those of us that campaigned around asking citizens to tune out.”

“Though clearly we don’t take full credit for the decline, certainly one would have to assume we were effective and part of the decline,” he said

Sharpton added: “to those that mocked the idea of a tune out, it seems the joke was on them.”

Despite significant buzz surrounding the ceremony, specifically regarding boycotts and protests regarding this year’s all white acting nominees, ratings for the politically and racially charged Oscars were down 6 percent in total viewership from 2015.

Sharpton led a rally Sunday near Hollywood’s Dolby Theater in Los Angeles to protest the lack of diversity among this year’s nominees, in which he slammed a “systemic problem of exclusion” and put members of the Academy “on notice.”

At the protest, Sharpton also promised to target the show’s advertisers in the future, Breitbart’s Daniel Nussbaum reported.

Sharpton declared: “We are not going to allow the Oscars to continue … This will be the last night of an all-white Oscars. We intend to go to advertisers, we intend to mobilize all over the country. This is an insult to Americans of all races.”

Sharpton first ripped into the Academy for excluding black performers this go-around in January, after the nominees were announced.

“Hollywood is like the Rocky Mountains, the higher up you get the whiter it gets and this year’s Academy Awards will be yet another Rocky Mountain Oscars,” Sharpton said in a statement obtained by the Hollywood Reporter. “Yet again, deserving Black actors and directors were ignored by the Academy — which reinforces the fact that there are few if any Blacks with real power in Hollywood.”