Once a year, MTV holds an award show called the VMAs, or the MTV Video Music Awards, to honor the best of the best for their musical abilities and their contributions to the art of music videos. Not only do people watch and attend to see who wins what awards, but there are many performances from stars like Ed Sheeran, Kendrick Lamar, Katy Perry, Logic and many more artists throughout the show. Something seemed a little bit off though about the amount of viewers they had this year.

The year of 2017 was not good for MTV when it came to the VMAs. 2017 viewing rates for the VMAs were the worst in MTV history. According to The Washington Post, the MTV video music awards tallied 5.68 million viewers across 10 different networks on Sunday, Aug. 27. This may seem like a lot, but this is less than the 6.5 million people that watched it in 2016, the 9.8 million people in 2015 and the 10.3 million in 2014. So, why are the amount of viewers decreasing?

According to the controversy on social media, many people think that there weren’t many viewers due to political reasons, or just lack of talent in the celebrities that made an appearance. A main reason people didn’t tune into the VMAs this year was due to the fact that HBO’s hit series “Game Of Throne’s”, held its season finale episode on the same night. The season finale show reportedly drew 12.07 million viewers, which was a record for the fantasy series.

But whether “Game Of Throne’s” was on that night or not, many people streamed the show online and throughout social media, which can also contribute to why the TV audience was so low. This not only affected the VMAs, but many other award shows this year.

Whether people believe it or not, television is changing, and there are so many different ways to watch and catch up on shows through different forms of media or apps. There are also just so many shows on so many different networks that we can’t watch them all at once, which is why people stream them later on. This is what is decreasing viewing rates on TV, just like with the VMAs.