MTV
Video Music Awards ratings dip, bad situation
Christopher
Rodriguez
This
year's MTV Video Music Awards may have
been a better show than last year’s,
but the festivities could not help seeing
a dramatic decline in ratings this year.
While 10 million viewers tuned in to see their favorite artists last year,
just over 8 million viewers watched this year’s event. Several factors
could have attributed to the dip in ratings.
Among the most obvious is Hurricane Katrina, which threatened to postpone the
entire show on Aug. 30. The event was in fact delayed by one half-hour and
ran 24 minutes long due to the threat of Katrina hitting the Miami shore.
During the show, however, the hurricane was barely reaching U.S. coastlines
and at that moment no one knew how catastrophic the aftermath would be.
Another much less severe reason would be America’s dying interest in
awards shows. This year has seen a decline in awards shows ratings, including
the 2005 Academy and Emmy Awards, with both shows experiencing a decrease of
1 and 2 million viewers respectively.
Americans have currently shown more interest for non-scripted reality television
than written television material on a weekly basis.
The 2005 Emmy Awards’ lack of ratings could, however, be an isolated
case. During the time of this awards show, the terrorist attacks in London
had occurred, dissuading many viewers from watching four hours of a scripted
and tape-delayed awards shows to view the situation unfolding in London. Despite
these events, all the awards should have dominated their respective time slots.
Other factors have contributed to the dying interest in awards shows as well.
The fact we are still at war in Iraq and are losing soldiers on a daily basis
could be one, while another could be the rising gas prices, the slumping economy
or the tsunami that hit Southeast Asia.
Aside from thoseevents, I can’t think of a reason as to why the awards
shows are less interesting this year than in the past.
The most interesting thing was MTV’s response to the low rating; from
an optimistic standpoint, MTV seemed content with having the awards show No.
1 in the ratings for all programming on television (including network television)
from 8 to 11 p.m. two Sundays ago.
However, in a recent Yahoo article, a spokesperson for MTV said the channel
is very disappointed in the viewer turnout for this year’s awards show,
despite all the events occurring in our country at the time.
I’m sure MTV is disappointed with the ratings. They invested a lot of
time, money and advertising to put on a much better show than last year, which
in my opinion was terrible (mainly because rock-n-roll dominated the show).
However, the public relations personnel need to realize this is a very delicate
time for our nation.
Never before have we been inundated with natural disasters, war and difficult
times facing our nation and our world all at the same time. Let us not forget
that this coming weekend will also be the four-year anniversary of the terrorist
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in New York and Washington D.C.
This is a very sensitive time for all of us, but it doesn’t hurt to get
a little excited for a television program every now and then. Besides, without
the VMAs, Hollywood would have nothing to talk about for weeks. |
