VMA Ratings Fell With Miley Cyrus Hosting, on Stage Spat With Nikki Minaj

Sep 01, 2015 07:49 AM EDT

She loves the publicity and the attention. Unfortunately, all these publicities and media attentions she generate from her stunts that range from insane to outrageous, Miley Cyrus has failed to translate them to higher rating.

In fact, the Miley Cyrus-hosted 2015 Video Music Award will go in the books with the lowest number of television viewers, according to a report by EW. Citing official data released by MTV, it said that Sunday's telecast of the VMA generated 9.8 million viewers from 10 Viacom-owned networks.

This figure was five percent less than the 10.32 million viewers delivered in 2014. And that is after the 2014 numbers dropped 18 percent from 2013.

However, MTV maintained that Sunday's MTV telecast holds the record as the most tweeted program this year, rivaling the Super bowl. The 2015 VMA was tweeted 21.4 million times, data showed.

The VMA is also generating more online viewership, MTV claimed, with streaming of Sunday's event rising 155 percent from 2014.

Cyrus and Nicki Minaj Exchange Barbs on Stage

While Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj may have buried their hatches behind them, the Anaconda singer picked up another fight with Cyrus.

In her acceptance speech for the best hip-hop video award for her song Anaconda, Minah took jabs at Cyrus over her recent interview with the New York Times for siding with Swift rather than the rappper.

"And now, back to this b***h that had a lot to say about me the other day in the press," Minaj said and then called out on Cyrus, "Miley, what's good?"

In the New York Times interview, Cyrus took a pot shot for Minaj's complaint for not getting the Video of the Year Nomination and said Minaj made the issue about herself.

Cyrus said during the NYT interview, "It's not anger like, 'Guys, I'm frustrated about some things that are a bigger issue,' said Cyrus. "You made it about you. Not to sound like a b****, but that's like, 'Eh, I didn't get my V.M.A.'"

"If you want to make it about race, there's a way you could do that. But don't make it just about yourself. Say: 'This is the reason why I think it's important to be nominated. There's girls everywhere with this body type,'" Cyrus continued. "What I read sounded very Nicki Minaj, which, if you know Nicki Minaj is not too kind. It's not very polite. I think there's a way you speak to people with openness and love. You don't have to start this pop star against pop star war."

Luckily, Cyrus seemed to take Minaj's comment in stride and responded to Nicki, "Hey, we're all in this industry, we all do interviews, and we all know how they manipulate s**t. Nicki, congratulations."

According to Zap2It, the exchange was not at all staged judging from the reaction of Miley when Nicky called her out.