The 2020 MTV Video Music Awards had let’s say a narrow audience: around 2.5 to 3 million viewers on the main Viacom channels.
Only 1.3 million watched on actual MTV. Six other channels averaged around 222,000 viewers each. MTV2 and Country Music TV had 123,000 and 113,00 each. Viacom is claiming 6 million viewers across 12 channels. But I’d call that passive watching. If you weren’t viewing this thing on MTV or VH1, it sounds like the scene in “Mary Hartman” where mental patients are drooling in front of the TV while anything plays.
By contrast, “Black Panther” over on ABC scored 6 million people.
Even using Viacom’s numbers, total viewership dropped 5%. And that was even with one more channel than last year.
Keke Palmer did the best job she could hosting under the circumstances. But the show still was very canned, and the winners were obvious from the acts that performed. There were no surprised. That doesn’t take away from the performances, but there was zero drama.
You can sort of tell that there was no buzz off the show since there was little sales bounce from it. The iTunes top 10 remained largely unchanged over the weekend and hasn’t been shaken up by a breakout hit.
The top channels:
MTV 1. 315 million
VH-1 267,000
Comedy Central 210,000
Nick at Nite 234,000
BET 267,000
Paramount 210,000
TVLand 224,000
MTV2 113,000
CMT 123, 000
