*In its 15th year, the BET Awards have become one of TV’s most anticipated shows and has solidified its position as cable’s top award show.
This past Sunday’s show-stopping presentation with the incredible (surprise) opening by Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar, Jesse Williams’ passionate speech, the unbelievable Prince tribute performances, the recognition of the late Muhammad Ali and protests of Donald Trump, was more than enough to propel the 2016 BET Awards to top the 2015 ratings, according to Deadline.
Even facing the Season 6 finale of Game Of Thrones, there was also a 7.2 million viewers watching the ceremony simulcast live on 12 Viacom networks – the largest platform ever for the 15-year-old awards show. Up 11% in total viewers from last year, when the ceremony was only shown on BET and Centric and didn’t battle GoT, this year’s show was seen on BET plus MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, Logo, Spike and Centric among others.
Specifically, in the 18-49 demo, the 2016 BET Awards brought in 3.8 million viewers, making it again the top cable awards show of the TV season – just like last year but with a 10% uptick. Ratingswise, last night’s show snagged a 4.27 in the key demo across the Viacom dozen – that’s up 15% from last year.
The 2016 BET Awards was the most social TV show across all day Sunday. A total of 3,446,905 Tweets were generated by 623,099 people in the U.S., according to Nielsen.
READ RELATED STORY: #BlackTwitter to Justin Timberlake After Praising Jesse Williams: ‘He’s Talking About You, Tho’
Also it’s worth noting that for a fourth year in a row, attendance for the four-day BET Experience in downtown Los Angeles at LA Live was up, by 10% to 165,000 visitors.
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