As The Daily Wire has highlighted, MTV’s Video Music Awards this year escalated its divisive embrace of partisan politics, at one point playing the “F*** Donald Trump” song for its audience during a commercial break just in case they weren’t getting the message. Seriously.
But while the VMAs are taking their woke political messaging to new heights, their ratings are plummeting. As ShowBiz 411‘s Roger Friedman points out, the awards show has lost nearly half of its viewers over the last three years.
Here’s Friedman’s breakdown of the eye-opening numbers:
The MTV Video Music Awards were hurt as badly as the white walker who was brought to the big confab of families. On MTV the awards scored only 2.6 million viewers. On all Viacom platforms the total was closer to 5.3 million– which was a big drop from the 6.5 million of last year. The VMA pre show, which was just on MTV, grabbed 1.1 million viewers.
The VMAs show a steady decline year to year. In 2014 they had 10.3 million viewers. This means their viewership has been cut by half. Each year they lose another million people.
Friedman offers a few possibilities for what’s dragging the VMAs into the ratings ditch, including the season finale of Game of Thrones (drawing a record 16.5 million viewers total, including 12.1 million linear viewers). But, as the numbers show, that doesn’t explain the consistency of the downward trend MTV is seeing. He also suggests that the “disposable music” and “horrible performers” are to blame, which is also probably partly true.
But it could also be MTV’s insistence on deliberately alienating half the country and all those viewers who just want to tune in for some politics-free entertainment by doing stuff like this:
MTV Video Music Awards Played ‘F*** Donald Trump’ As Sign Of Resistance
VMA’s Trot Out Robert E. Lee’s Descendant: ‘We Have Made My Grandfather An Idol Of White Supremacy’