Crews 
MTV pulled out all the stops for Sunday’s 2016 Video Music Awards, in an attempt to get high ratings and bring the show back to what it once was in its glory days.
The network scored Beyonce, who performed for nearly 15 minutes and was nominated for 11 moonmen, Rihanna, who performed a medley of her hits over four performances throughout the night and was crowned with the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award. Britney Spears’ made what was touted as her “triumphant” return to the show, and Kanye West was given four minutes to do whatever the hell he wanted, which as we saw was unveil Teyana Taylor‘s smoking hot body and dance moves to the world.
Despite all of this, the VMA’s still brought in mediocre views compared to what it used to bring in and reportedly saw a 34 percent drop from the 2015 ceremony. Via The Hollywood Reporter:
Across 11 Viacom networks, the premiere telecast brought in 6.5 million viewers.
Compared to last year’s show, which pulled a similar move by casting a wide net across the cable entertainment suite, the VMAs are down by more than 4 million viewers (a 34 percent drop). All told, the 2015 show grossed just shy of 10 million viewers across all of the networks.
With headlining performances by Beyonce, Rihanna and Britney Spears, this year’s VMAs mark a low for ratings on the main network, as well. Last year it brought 5 million viewers, falling from 8.3 million in 2014.
The network was quick to point to more promising streaming data on Monday morning. A network release touted a 70 percent increase (62.8 million video starts) in streams from VMA day in 2015. Facebook streaming was up 938 percent.
