- The purposefully outrageous Video Music Awards failed to dent what has been a slow ratings bleed at MTV and at Viacom (VIA -0.5%, VIAB -0.3%) channels in general, losing a half-million viewers from last year despite trying to guarantee controversy with a Miley Cyrus hosting gig.
- That's despite adding six more channels simulcasting the show -- not only MTV and MTV2 and sister networks VH1 and VH1 Classic, but also Comedy Central, CMT, Logo, BET, Centric and TV Land.
- The show peaked in 2011 with 12.4M total viewers. Last night's broadcast drew 9.8M viewers across the 10 networks.
- The awards did set a Nielsen Twitter record, as the "most tweeted" nonsports program since the ratings firm began tracking Twitter TV activity. Some 2.2M people in the U.S. sent 21.4M tweets about the awards (up 69% Y/Y), and 11.8M people saw them 676M times in total. It also generated 19.1M streams (up 155% Y/Y), according to MTV.
- Another (somewhat) bright spot is that the VMAs are the year's top-rated cable awards show in the 18-34 demographic.