Written by Chris Albrecht
Posted Tuesday, September 11, 2007 at 2:35 PM PT

Britney’s Bomb Causes MTV Traffic Explosion

While it was supposed to be Britney Spears’ comeback performance, MTV.com was the big winner after the falling star’s abysmal performance at the channel’s annual Video Music Awards.

The music site saw its traffic surge to record numbers as people visited to watch the trainwreck in action. MTV.com logged 2.6 million visitors on Sunday (remember the awards were held at night, so that wasn’t even a full day), making it the site’s highest-trafficked day ever. As of 3:30 PM ET on Monday, MTV.com had delivered 7 million streams.

The lesson here: Online video can breathe life into TV failures — as long as they’re spectacular ones.

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Topic: Networks & Studios

Comments (4)

I have been coming to this site a lot lately, so i thought would be proper to leave a note of appreciation here.

Thanks,
Jim Mirkalami

Jim Mirkalami — 2:02 PM on February 7, 2008 Reply
Excelent blog and comment. My Favorit. Thank you and best regards from Autoversicherung

Autoversicherung — 4:18 AM on September 21, 2008 Reply
Excelent posts and comments. I wish good luck from Kredit

Kredit — 9:56 AM on October 30, 2008 Reply
with Pretty Much Amazing running the video and catty comments about hair extenders http://kredit24-monate.info

googile — 11:41 PM on April 20, 2009 Reply

Linkbacks (14)

[...] VMAs the night before. Yes, I got sucked in. I watched the video. Apparently, me and everyone else. According to NewTeeVee, 2.6 million people tuned into mtv.com to watch Britney’s train wreck, making it the biggest [...]

Mickipedia » Blog Archive » It… — 5:55 PM on September 11, 2007
[...] bring in more than 23 million unique visitors to the site. (This news, following MTV.com’s record-smashing weekend, makes it a good time to be Big Media.) [...]

Vid-Biz: YouTube, Disney and More «… — 12:38 PM on September 13, 2007
[...] is ironic, the Britney bomb has worked out for everyone except Britney. There is justice in this world after [...]

Leave Britney Alone Guy & 15 Frames Of… — 11:25 PM on September 23, 2007
[...] Finally in entertainment, A Socialite’s Life was the most polite about Britney Spears’ disastrous dance appearance at the VMA Awards: She could have given more. Others were predictably less kind, with Pretty Much Amazing running the video and catty comments about hair extenders, and Defamer stacking critics’ critiques to the ceiling. The big winner? MTV.com which got whooping 2.6 million visitors to watch the trainwreck in action. [...]

Rojo: Web2 War Chest; iPhone Unlocks; General… — 8:09 AM on October 11, 2007
[...] next video by remixing old footage (wonder if they’ll include video from this year’s MTV Awards). [...]

Vid-Biz: South Park, Sarah Myers, Britney… — 10:48 AM on November 30, 2007
[...] good chunk of that traffic was driven by the morbidly-curious taking in Britney’s disastrous performance at the VMAs, but other women who weren’t lip-syncing badly and forgetting their choreography [...]

MTVN Serves 1.2 Billion Streams in ‘… — 7:00 PM on December 27, 2007
[...] good chunk of that traffic was driven by the morbidly-curious taking in Britney’s disastrous performance at the VMAs, but other women who weren’t lip-syncing badly and forgetting their choreography [...]

MTVN Serves 1.2 Billion Streams in ‘07… — 12:32 AM on December 28, 2007
[...] in one format or location first. MTV, for example, successfully employed a similar tactic with the highly popular video of Britney Spears’ spellbindingly lackluster performance at the VMAs last year. But as [...]

Essay: The End of Exclusivity « NewTeeVee — 1:35 PM on January 7, 2008
[...] Goes for Viral Gold With Iron Man After seeing Britney’s comeback fiasco turn into server-melting gold, MTV intentionally created a viral clip for its Movie Awards last night, with surprisingly funny [...]

MTV Goes for Viral Gold With Iron Man «… — 6:57 AM on June 2, 2008
[...] Spears’ career and gave birth to Chris Crocker’s — and MTV benefited big time by exclusively hosting the Gimme More video. So when MTV announced that Britney Spears would once again be returning to open the show, it [...]

Vid Picks: MTV VMAs, Spontaneity-Free «… — 12:56 PM on September 8, 2008
[...] exclusive distribution of Britney’s train wreck of a performance at the Video Music Awards netted MTV 7 million visitors over the next two [...]

Want to Watch the Britney Spears Documentary… — 6:41 PM on November 30, 2008
[...] Weekly do the talking and who many thought would never recover from the embarrassing incidents like the 2007 MTV VMAs. It’s nearly 2009 now, and New Britney is in full bloom. (For the purposes of this argument, [...]

Britney Spears, Back On YouTube - NewTeeVee… — 12:47 PM on December 18, 2008
[...] US Weekly do the talking and who many thought would never recover from embarrassing incidents like the 2007 MTV VMAs. It’s nearly 2009 now, and New Britney is in full bloom. (For the purposes of this argument, [...]

Britney Spears, Back Via YouTube «… — 12:50 PM on December 18, 2008
[...] glitzy freak fests. For instance, it got Britney Spears, at the height of her meltdown in 2007, to perform at the VMAs, and Sunday it enabled a skimpily dressed Sasha Baron Cohen to descend from the ceiling onto [...]

How MTV Turns a TV Show Into an Online Event — 4:31 PM on June 4, 2009