The 2006 MTV Video Music Awards suffered massive negative criticisms from fans and viewers citing the show is lacking and uninteresting. Another reason is the expansion of online broadcasting. The award ceremony's ratings were down 28% from the 8 million viewers it averaged in 2005 and 45 % down from 2004 when they had almost double the amount of viewers with 10.3 million. So what did they decide to do to in 2007? In a ‘cheesy’ publicity stunt, MTV originally announced that the show would only air once and will never be reaired again in its original entirety. They knew that the ratings for the VMAs were decreasing year over year. So they cut corners, streamline the award categories from 13 to 8, hold the awards show in a smaller venue (The Palms Resort and Casino in Las Vegas), and produce the show on a smaller budget, cutting the show time from 3 hours to 2, and not showing the awards in HDTV. Was it worth it? Apart from Britney Spears trying to come back by opening the VMAs, Sarah Silverman proclaiming she has diarrhea to get out of something, Tommy Lee punching Kid Rock in front of Diddy, Justin Timberlake challenging MTV to play more music videos not reality shows, Beyoncé almost popping out, Chris Brown channeling Michael Jackson, Alicia Keys covering George Michael's "Freedom", Rihanna winning Video of the Year for “Umbrella”, Gym Class Heroes getting drunk as they won Best New Artist, and Timbaland, the Maestro, closing out the show with Nelly Furtado, Keri Hilson, and Justin Timberlake…well, you make the call.