Gary Levin

USA TODAY

The 68th Primetime Emmy Awards averaged a meager 11.3 million viewers Sunday, worse than last year's record low of 11.9 million.

Preliminary Nielsen ratings show the telecast, which aired live in all time zones, suffered against competition from NBC's Sunday Night Football, and was even approached by the opener of CBS's The Case of JonBenet Ramsay miniseries, which drew 10.3 million.

The turnout compares unfavorably to the Emmys' recent high in 2013, when 17.6 million tuned it to see Modern Family and Breaking Bad win the top awards.

ABC's Jimmy Kimmel hosted Sunday's Emmys, as he did in 2012, the last time they aired on the network. Unlike other awards shows, the Emmy Awards rotates among the four major broadcast networks. Last year, Fox's broadcast, hosted by Andy Samberg, followed that network's own late-afternoon football telecast.

Nielsen Social reports that 1.4 million people generated 2.7 million interactions on Facebook and Twitter Sunday night, easily tops among non-sports TV shows for the week.