Kanye West declaring his intention to run for president, along with Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift making up, only for Nicki to call out boobs-and-tongue-baring host Miley Cyrus, simply weren’t enough to stop the VMAs’ ratings from dropping yet again. According to Entertainment Weekly, the show garnered 9.8 million viewers, a 5 percent drop from 2014.
As if that weren’t enough, 2014’s show ratings were also low, dropping 18 percent from 2013. Yet, as Mashable reports, the telecast garnered a whopping 21.4 million tweets, making it the most-tweeted about non-sports event or show of all-time (this year’s Super Bowl was tweeted about 25.1 million times, for comparison).
In addition, those 21.4 million tweets came from 2.2 million people, and they were seen by 11.8 million people 676 million times. In particular, MTV owes a debt of gratitude to Kanye West, the king of social media engagement, for delivering yet again last night, especially when he announced that he would run for president in 2020. Other frequently-tweeted moments include the Minaj/Cyrus spat, and Justin Bieber crying at the end of his performance.
Entertainment Weekly reports that streaming of the show also went up. This perhaps shows that TV ratings don’t matter much anymore. The real test of relevance lies with social media and online viewers.