Host Andy Samberg prepares to present a coffee mug to Lorne Michaels at the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 20, 2015, at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)
NEW YORK (AP) --
And the winner wasn't the Emmys — at least, when it came to the viewership.
Nielsen says Sunday's three-hour special on Fox averaged just 11.9 million viewers, making it the least-watched Emmycast in history.
Last year, when it aired on a Monday in late August on NBC, it logged 15.6 million viewers. In 2013, 17.8 million viewers tuned in for CBS' broadcast, teamed with an NFL game as a powerful lead-in.
This year's Emmy show likewise had football as a lead-in. But the Emmys faced football as direct competition, too, thanks to NBC's Sunday Night Football, which doubtless dragged down the Emmy audience.
The program, airing from Los Angeles' Microsoft Theater, was hosted by Andy Samberg.
Mark Zuckerberg talks about the Orion AR glasses during the Meta Connect conference on Sept. 25, 2024, in Menlo Park, Calif. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez, File)
Meta Platforms Inc. posted sharply higher profit and revenue for its fourth quarter on Wednesday, thanks to higher ad revenue on its social media properties, sending its shares up in after-hours trading even as it forecast increasing expenses on its artificial intelligence efforts.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he expects 2025 to "be the year when a highly intelligent and personalized AI assistant reaches more than 1 billion people, and I expect Meta AI to be that leading AI assistant."
The Menlo Park, California-based company earned $20.83 billion, or $8.02 per share, in the October-December quarter. That's up 49% from $14.02 billion, or $5.33 per share, in the same period a year earlier.
Revenue grew 21% to $48.39 billion from $40.11 billion.
Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings of $6.76 per share on revenue of $47 billion, according to a poll by FactSet.
"We continue to make good progress on AI, glasses, and the future of social media," Zuckerberg said in a statement.
For the current quarter, Meta said expects revenue of $39.5 billion to $41.8 billion. Analysts are expecting revenue at the high end of that range — $41.68 billion.
The company also said it expects expenses in the range of $114 billion to $119 billion, driven by infrastructure costs and employee compensation. Meta had 74,067 employees as of Dec. 31, up 10% from a year earlier.
"Meta's Q4 performance underscores the company's resilience in a still-uncertain digital ad market. By beating both earnings and revenue estimates, they've demonstrated that cost discipline and efficiency gains are paying dividends," said Jesse Cohen, an analyst with Investing.com. "However, the real headline is their commitment to aggressive capital expenditures.... Read More
