POPCULTURE

One night after the music world lost one of its biggest stars, Whitney Houston, audiences flocked to the Grammy Awards on CBS, which drew in the neighborhood of 40 million viewers – a 28-year high for the show and a larger audience than four of the last six Academy Awards telecasts.

Viewership was high at the outset with about 40.1 million, according to Nielsen, and peaked in the 9:30 p.m. half-hour with 43.1 million. The opening half-hour included the planned opening number by Bruce Springsteen as well as a prayer for the late Whitney Houston, read by host LL Cool J.

The preliminary primetime scores for the Grammy Awards (14.4 rating/32 share in adults 18-49, 41.1 million viewers overall) are expected to go down when full-duration averages are revealed later this morning; the show didn’t conclude until 11:30 and the final half-hour is traditionally the least-watched. Last year, the full show averaged a 10.0/27 in 18-49 and 26.7 million viewers overall.

Last year’s Oscars telecast on ABC did an 11.8/30 in adults 18-49 and 37.9 million viewers overall.

The largest audience ever for the Grammys was the 43.9 million who watched in 1984 as Michael Jackson moonwalked his way to a sweep of the major awards.