Oscar ratings up 13%

Bump and grind. The bump is the 13% increase in viewership over last year’s broadcast (from 32 million in 2008 to 36.3 million last night). The grind is the fact that’s this increase falls short of the 40 million viewers who tuned in 2 years ago and doesn’t come close to the 55 million who watched a decade ago, the year Titanic took home 11 trophies (Kate Winslet’s second nomination, at the age of 22).

This 13% boost is more than twice the 6% figure being reported all over the place earlier today, so they may have been measuring some other ratings unit.