Gary Levin

USA TODAY

The 89th Academy Awards sure ended with a bang, but the ratings were anything but.

Preliminary national ratings, adjusted for time zones across the country, revealed 32.9 million viewers tuned in Sunday night to the nearly four-hour ceremony on ABC, hosted for the first time by the network's late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. That's just a shade above the record-low turnout of 32 million logged in 2008, in the middle of a writers' strike that crippled Hollywood. Last year's telecast claimed 34.4, when Chris Rock hosted and Spotlight won best picture, but the show more typically draws closer to 40 million, according to Nielsen.

Sunday's awards proceeded mostly as expected, until the final award for best picture, when PricewaterhouseCoopers gave the wrong envelope to presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, who announced La La Land as best picture when Moonlight had won.

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The Oscars high point came in 1998, when 55 million watched blockbuster Titanic win best picture; its low, a decade later, in 2008, when 32 million watched No Country for Old Men win in the midst of a bitter writers strike that saw many boycott the ceremony. The more recent high was 43.7 million in 2014, in a ceremony hosted by Ellen DeGeneres that honored 12 Years a Slave as best picture.

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By comparison, the Grammy Awards on CBS drew 26.1 million same-day viewers Feb. 12, while NBC's Golden Globes claimed 20 million Jan. 8.