Without fail, the Academy Awards always winds up as one of the top 10 most-watched telecasts of the year in primetime. Until 2021. In a stunner, the Oscars didn’t even make this year’s list of the entire top 100.

That’s a tremendous fall from grace for the ceremony, which in 2020 was TV’s No. 2 entertainment telecast, with 24.3 million viewers — behind only the post-Super Bowl airing of “The Masked Singer.” This year’s plunge to 10.7 million viewers puts it way down on the full list. Besides sports, that means more people watched 21 different episodes of “NCIS,” nine episodes of “FBI,” seven episodes of “60 Minutes,” five episodes of “Yellowstone,“ four episodes of “The Equalizer” and one episode each of “Law & Order: SVU” and “Law & Order: Organized Crime“ than watched the Oscars.

Oh, and two CBS specials did better than the Oscars, too: “Oprah With Meghan and Harry” and “Adele One Night Only.”

RELATED: Most-Watched Television Networks: Ranking 2021’s Winners and Losers

This is, of course, an awards show problem, not just an Oscars problem. The Grammy Awards and the Golden Globes, which made the top 100 list in 2020, are nowhere to be found in 2021. (Read one idea about how to revive the Oscars — and hopefully get back on this list in 2022 — here.)

But it’s also a larger commentary on the state of what viewers are watching, in primetime, on linear TV in the 2020s. It’s sports. The NFL, beginning with the Super Bowl at No. 1, holds 39 of the 100 slots for top telecasts of the year, making football once again the most popular show on TV.

The Summer Olympics, delayed a year due to the pandemic, landed 14 spots for NBC, while the World Series picked up three, NCAA basketball scored two, college football also had two and the NBA Finals secured one slot.

Among scripted fare, while other shows come and go (like the once-dominant “The Walking Dead”), “NCIS” continues to dominate, this year with 17 slots. followed by “FBI” (seven) and newcomer “The Equalizer” (four), all on CBS. Paramount Network’s “Yellowstone” was the only cable entertainment show to make the cut this year, with two episodes. “60 Minutes” landed a healthy five positions, while comedy and reality shows didn’t make it into the top 100 at all this year.

CBS led this year’s total viewer telecast ranker with 39 programs (up from 27 last year), followed by NBC with 35 (vs. 37 last year), then Fox (13), ESPN (10), Paramount Network (2) and ABC (1).

Here are some of the programming highs and lows of 2021:

HIGHS

“Squid Game”
Although not technically a part of what we’re discussing here, it’s hard to deny the power of “Squid Game.” Netflix’s dystopic South Korean thriller has dominated the pop culture zeitgeist since its worldwide debut on Sept. 17. The K-drama, starring Lee Jung-jae (Gi-hun), Park Hae-soo (Sang-woo) and Jung Ho-yeon (Sae-byeok), is apparently the most-watched series in Netflix’s history — pulling in 1.65 billion hours of viewing in the 28 days since its premiere, spending 13 consecutive weeks on Netflix’s Top 10 list for non-English television series, and consistently reappearing on Nielsen’s SVOD Top 10 lists for original programming. Creator, writer and director Hwang Dong-hyuk knew it would do well regionally, but he never imagined that a harsh critique of capitalism under the guise of a macabre take on a children’s game would appeal to audiences at this scale. “Squid Game” won a People’s Choice Award, won a Gotham Award in the breakthrough long-form series category, and has received multiple 2022 Critics Choice Awards and Golden Globes nods. Per Netflix Head of Global TV Bela Bajaria, the “Squid Game” effect has made U.S. viewing of South Korean series on the streamer shoot up by 200%, and the momentum has led to other Korean-language hits on Netflix, including “Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha,” “Hellbound” and “Sweet Home.”

“Yellowstone”
Kevin Costner has become one of the hottest TV stars of 2021, thanks to his portrayal of grisly Montana gazillionaire rancher and patriarch John Dutton on Paramount Network’s “Yellowstone.” What started as a sleeper hit from Taylor Sheridan has become a juggernaut, returning to TV after more than a yearlong absence with a two-part Season 4 premiere that soared to 14.7 million viewers in Nielsen’s L3 ratings — without any boost from streaming. And the neo-Western ensemble drama’s Sunday primetime ratings have continued to be consistently high throughout the season. Given that “Yellowstone” is technically in competition with the enduringly popular “Sunday Night Football” telecast, the fact that the show pulls in more than 7 million viewers in Nielsen’s time-adjusted Live + Same Day ratings — perhaps even appealing to many of the same viewers — is a tremendous feat.

“NCIS”
Now in its 19th season, the popularity of the long-running CBS series remains a juggernaut. Even as Mark Harmon departed the show full-time this fall, the drama’s first 15 seasons remain a hit for Netflix, where they can be streamed. And as mentioned above, 17 episodes of the series made it on to the top telecasts of 2021 ranker. While most series come and go, ”NCIS” appears to be forever.

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MIXED

Fall TV
A year after the pandemic scrambled everything, fall TV returned to some semblance of normalcy, featuring the usual mix of highly anticipated franchise extensions (“NCIS: Hawai’i,” “FBI: International”), reimaginations (“The Wonder Years,” “The Big Leap”), reboots (“4400”) and creative singing competition formats (“Alter Ego”). And as usual, there were a mix of ratings flops and surprising victors. In cable, FX’s “Impeachment: American Crime Story” faced a disappointing audience turnout and little to no buzz, in spite of strong acting from Beanie Feldstein and Sarah Paulson, while “Yellowstone” has become a smash for Paramount Network, in spite of it receiving little fanfare from TV critics.

LOWS

Awards Shows
Like we mentioned above, the glitziest televised ceremonies in the industry were awarded the prize for biggest ratings nightmares of 2021. February’s Golden Globes bombed 62.3% compared with the previous year’s show; in March, the Grammys nosedived 53% compared with 2020; and then the Oscars in April spiraled downward 58% compared with last year. While the Emmys in September and the American Music Awards in November reversed a pattern of steady declines, most award shows this year couldn’t win back audiences that have stopped watching what were once guaranteed ratings hits. Perhaps the combination of Zoom- and virtual- (or hybrid-) ceremony fatigue was partly to blame, but these shows are becoming more irrelevant and outdated to audiences, especially younger viewers. And because many of the shows had COVID-19 restrictions, not even fashionistas could enjoy a memorable outfit or two on the red carpet. When Jason Sudeikis’ tie-dye sweatshirt at the Golden Globes is the most-talked-about look, style is a dud.

“Y The Last Man”/“Cowboy Bebop”
FX began developing “Y: The Last Man,” based on the comic book series from Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, all the way back in 2015. The show went through years of development, including a showrunner shift, a title tweak, cast changes, a platform swap (from FX to FX on Hulu) and then COVID-19 production shutdowns. Finally, “Y: The Last Man” debuted, at long last, on Sept. 13. It was canceled a month later. Meanwhile, “Cowboy Bebop” was first announced as a live-action adaptation of the anime series in 2017 and picked up by Netflix in 2018. Production began the following year, but was halted after star John Cho was injured. And then the pandemic further delayed things. The show finally debuted in November. It was canceled in less than a month. Due to the fickle nature of streaming data, we’ll never really know what stats convinced FX on Hulu and Netflix to pull those plugs so fast.

Here’s our ratings roundup of the year’s most-watched telecasts (in Live+7 ratings), according to broadcast and cable measurements, in both total viewers and adults 18-49.

[For historical record, here are previous year-end telecast rankers: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015.]

MOST-WATCHED PRIMETIME TELECASTS OF 2021 (TOTAL VIEWERS)

THE 50 TOP-RATED PRIMETIME TELECASTS OF 2021 (ADULTS 18-49)