MTV Video Music Awards 2016

NEW YORK (AP) — MTV says it will consider airing its Video Music Awards live across the country in future years, a reflection of how the annual celebration of pop culture is increasingly being experienced online instead of on television.

A buzz deficiency is one factor, but another is the rapid change in how MTV's young audience consumes content.

The network said Tuesday that there were 149 million streams of VMA content online Sunday and Monday, a combination of live streaming through MTV's website and aggressive packaging of video clips on venues like Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the like. The majority of streams (86 million) came Monday, after people heard or read about the show and wanted to check out clips, MTV said.

The comparable number of streams for 2015 was 30.7 million, MTV said.

MTV traditionally airs the show live at 9 p.m. on the east coast, and at the same hour via tape delay in other time zones. That follows the common television rule of placing content at a time when advertisers will pay more for commercials.

The MTV VMAs honor the best in the music video and have often been called  the "Super Bowl for youth."