TV Ratings: MTV VMAs Broadcast Sees 3% Uptick

MTV’s VMAs are making a bit of a comeback. After struggling in viewership the past two years (like many award shows), Sunday night’s telecast saw a 3% boost in viewership, according to TheWrap citing Nielsen data..

The awards show drew a total of 3.9 million linear viewers, which is up from the 3.7 million who tuned into last year’s telecast. However, this year’s show didn’t move the needle much among the advertiser-friendly 18-49 demographic, with the ratings sitting about roughly the same as 2021 (about a 2.8 in gross ratings).

MTV’s research and PR teams also combine Nielsen’s linear numbers for the VMAs with their own internal digital data into a proprietary metric called “Total Minutes Consumed” (TMC). For the 2022 VMAs, they say that number came out to 1.59 billion, which is a 14% jump from the previous telecast.

According to MTV, the show was a hit on social media, where it generated more than 40 million interactions — beating the Super Bowl and the Oscars. It marked the “most social” VMAs of all time, up 6% in interactions.