The 2021 VMAs on MTV declined 17% in ratings from last year. But that’s not necessarily a *bad* thing.
Sunday’s VMAs on MTV alone had a 0.9 rating among adults 18-49. The negative movement in that important demo is actually pretty positive when you consider the fact that many recent awards shows dropped 50% year to year.
Once again, MTV’s research and PR teams combined Nielsen’s linear numbers for the 2021 VMAs with their own internal digital data into a proprietary metric called “Total Minutes Consumed” (TMC), which they say came to 1.40 billion on Sunday vs. the 1.29 billion the awards show put up in 2020.