Sunday night’s MTV Video Music Awards didn’t just generate the usual social media grumbling. It set off a full-scale revolt among viewers who watched the broadcast arrive late, miss its own opening number, and leave some of music’s biggest names absent from the room. According to Breitbart News, fans flooded X with calls for MTV to end the show for good, with one user declaring the ceremony has “felt like a funeral for awhile now.”
The frustration crystallized around a simple problem: people who tuned in for the VMAs got football instead. The official VMAs account posted a Sunday night update telling viewers to “hold tight” because the 2026 show would “take off after the football game finishes,” a message that did little to calm an audience already primed for the event’s signature opening performance. The Cowboys-Ravens NFL game ran over, and by the time the ceremony began streaming close to 8:00 p.m. β roughly 20 minutes behind schedule β the opening act had already come and gone and the first award had been handed out.
Viewers Sound Off
“I’m fucking pissed Madonna is on stage [right now] and we’re watching fucking football!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT TF HAS THIS WORLD COME TO!!!!!!!!!! GENUINELY!!!!!” one user wrote, per Breitbart’s account of the reaction online.
Another complained that even when the show did air, the viewing experience fell apart. “You couldn’t even see the opening performance because it was glitching then entire time,” the user wrote. A third directed anger at the network itself: “You guys are a bunch of sick fucks. This will be the last VMAs because you fucking killed them.”
The calls to cancel the show predate Sunday’s technical mess, but the broadcast gave them fresh ammunition. One post predicting the end β “Getting the feeling this might be the last VMAs” β collected more than 26,000 likes and 1.8 million views.
“We say this every single year,” another user replied. “Honestly just pull the plug.”
A third agreed with the sentiment but framed it as a matter of knowing when to stop. “There’s no shame in bowing out gracefully,” the post read. “Gotta read the room.”
Some went broader, arguing the problem isn’t unique to MTV. “Award shows are dying in general,” one user declared. Another offered a blunter take on the format itself: “The VMAs have felt like a funeral for awhile now. It had its time in the sun, but those days are sadly over and what it’s become doesn’t work.”
And then there were those who didn’t know the show was happening at all. “Didn’t even know it was on last night,” one user wrote β a small comment that, for an awards show built on cultural relevance, may sting more than any insult.
One critique aimed less at logistics and more at the industry ritual the VMAs represent. The user described the event as “a room full of people in the same industry standing around applauding each other, telling everybody how amazing they are, while half of them probably don’t even like each other,” adding, “If this is what award shows have become, just hand everybody a mirror and save us three hours.”
Missing Stars and a Shaky Comeback
The broadcast’s problems extended beyond scheduling and technical glitches. Several music-industry heavyweights reportedly skipped the proceedings entirely, including Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, Olivia Rodrigo, and Zara Larsson β absences that undercut the premise of an all-star celebration.
Madonna, who did appear, drew criticism for what Breitbart described as an “utterly unfocused” comeback performance. Later in the show, the “Like a Virgin” singer appeared to forget which award she was presenting, then announced she was trying to retrieve something that had been stuck in her “ass” all night β a remark that landed as awkward laughter from the audience rather than the intended joke.
Sunday’s ceremony was hosted by Snoop Dogg at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.
A Long Goodbye?
For years, the VMAs have occupied a strange place in the awards-show ecosystem β still capable of producing viral moments, but increasingly competing with a media landscape where the performances and acceptance speeches get clipped and shared within minutes, often by people who never watched the broadcast itself. The gap between the show and its audience keeps widening.
What happened Sunday suggests the gap may now be the story. Viewers who wanted to watch the VMAs were shown a football game. Those who stuck around saw a glitching feed. By the time the show found its footing, much of the online conversation had shifted from the awards to whether the whole enterprise should still exist.
“Gotta read the room,” one viewer wrote. Whether MTV agrees remains to be seen β but the network’s own social media account spent part of the night asking fans to wait, rather than asking them to watch.
Source: www.breitbart.com β https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2026/09/28/mtv-vmas-viewers-beg-organizers-to-pull-the-plug-on-award-show-felt-like-a-funeral/