The 2016 VMAs happened last weekend, featuring performances from the likes of Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Britney Spears among others. Kanye West also stopped by to give another speech, debuting his new video for "Fade" in the process. Unfortunately for MTV, though, those big names weren't enough to get more people tuning into the show on TV than last year, which saw a 3% decrease in viewers from 2014.
Nielsen is reporting that the 2016 VMAs saw a total viewers of 6.5 million across MTV, VH1, and nine other Viacom-owned networks. While that number is nothing to brush aside, it still marks a 34% decrease from 2015's VMAs. However, MTV is reporting that despite the numbers on TV falling, the numbers on social media have dramatically risen. The 2016 VMAs saw 62.8 million digital-video streams, which is an increase of 70% from 2015.
90% of all TV related social media posts on Sunday night (August 28) was related to the VMAs, with it occupying the top trending hashtag on Twitter for over 13 hours. Facebook saw 45.8 million VMAs related videos streamed on the site, with 15 million of said number coming from Beyoncé's 15-minute performance of tracks from Lemonade. As Hypebot points out, that's almost 3 times the number of people who watched the VMAs on TV.
