Vulgar MTV Movie Awards Gets 13% Less Viewers Than Last Year

Unless you've been asleep for the past 24 hours, you've heard or read about Sunday's MTV Movie Awards in which producers and presenters seemed to go out of their way to say "f--k" whenever possible.

Figures released by various ratings house are giving conflicting reports about how many people actually watched this vulgar display.

Some say viewership was up; others say it dropped.

For instance, Entertainment Weekly reported Monday evening:

More than 16 million viewers watched the MTV Movie Awards across the MTV, MTV2 and VH1 networks Sunday - up 2% from last year's telecast. It was the show's largest audience in seven years. Among female teens, the show that was hosted by Aziz Ansari averaged a 5.7 rating on MTV, up 6% versus last year. It was also the show's best performance in the demographic since 2004. 

Yet Reuters reported a few hours later:

The "Twilight" stars, Tom Cruise's funky dance moves and a rainstorm of f-bombs could not stop the MTV Movie Awards from suffering a 13 percent drop in viewership, according to data issued on Monday.

The two-hour ceremony averaged 4.6 million viewers on Sunday, down from 5.3 million for last year's installment, which was the show's biggest audience since 2004.

Why the discrepancy? The Hollywood Reporter explained: 

(Yes, some sites are reporting the Awards drew 16.4 million viewers and claiming a 2% rise -- this is not actual average viewership, this is from a MTV press release touting how many people sampled the telecast by watching merely one minute or more). 

Indeed. Maybe after one minute's worth of F-bombs, many Americans opted out.