Will Smith’s brutal slap on Chris Rock during the Academy Awards seemed to have had a negligible effect on the show’s television audience. The world of social media is an entirely different story.

ABC reported that there were 22.7 million interactions on social media during Sunday’s Oscars ceremony. This is more than twice the number of interactions recorded last year at 9.5 million.

What did everyone post or tweet about?

According to the network, Oscar videos have been viewed 16 million times on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, which is a new record. A spokeswoman for ABC said Tuesday that they do not know the most popular video clips.

According to Nielsen, 16.6 million people watched the entire telecast, an increase of 58% over the 2021 program that was drastically reduced due to the pandemic. However, this year’s audience was 30% less than the 2020 show which had the second-smallest.

Nielsen measures viewership in 15 minute increments. The 17.3 million viewers who watched Smith’s attack during the quarter hour was almost identical to that of the following quarter-hour.

Nielsen stated that the audience dropped to 16.8 millions, but then rose to 17.4 million during Smith’s performance.

CBS won the week, thanks to its coverage of the NCAA men’s basketball tourney. ABC came in second place with 5 million viewers, despite boasting the Oscars. NBC had 2.28million, Fox had 2.27million, Univision had 1.5million, Univision had 1.1million, Telemundo had 960,000, and Ion Television had 1.1million.

TBS, which was also supported by the NCAAs, topped the cable networks with an average 2.81 million viewers in prime time. Fox News Channel had 2.47million, MSNBC had 1.12million, HGTV had 1.11million, and CNN had 876,000.

ABC’s “World News Tonight”, which averaged 8.3 million viewers per week, led the evening news ratings race. NBC’s Nightly News averaged 6.8 millions viewers, while CBS Evening News had 4.9 million.

The 20 most-watched prime-time programs, their networks, and viewerships for the week of March 21 to 27 are listed below:

1. “The Academy Awards,” ABC 16.62 million.

2. NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament: Arkansas vs. Duke (TBS, 10.34 Million).

3. NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament: St. Peter’s vs. Purdue. CBS, 10.18 Million.

4. NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament: North Carolina vs. UCLA. CBS, 8.82 Million.

5. NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament: Texas Tech vs. Duke. CBS, 8.23 Million.

6. NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament: Arkansas vs. Gonzaga. CBS, 8.16 Million.

7. “NCAA Pregame” (Saturday), TBS, 8.04 million.

8. “FBI,” CBS, 8.02 million.

9. “NCAA Pregame” (Thursday), CBS, 7.93 million.

10. ABC, 7.73 Million.

11. “NCAA Pregame” (Friday), CBS, 7.3 million.

12. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 7.29 million.

13. NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament: Houston vs. Villanova (TBS, 7.1 Million).

14. “NCIS,” CBS, 6.65 million.

15. “FBI: International,” CBS, 6.11 million.

16. CBS, 5.79 Million.

17. “The Neighborhood,” CBS, 5.72 million.

18. “Live from the Red Carpet” (6.58-7:27 p.m. PT), ABC, 5.45 Million

19. CBS, 5.39 Million.

20. “Survivor,” CBS, 5.35 million.