VMA WRAP-UP: RATINGS, ARRESTS AND FRENCH WORDS FOR
SEXUAL GRATIFICATION

MTV scored last year's highest-rated show on basic cable with the 1999 Video Music Awards, snagging an 11.2/18 share in homes that receive MTV, putting them in 8.2 million households. For those of you in the music, not the TV business, the first number represents the percentage of viewers who receive MTV who were watching the awards; the second number is the percentage of all people watching TV at the time who were tuned to the show. MTV's maximum reach is 75% of the nation's TV households.

This year, the overnight ratings dropped 20% to 8.7, which still marked the second-best figure in the show's 17-year history, making it the highest-rated cable entertainment program for the year to date, outperforming CBS, NBC, Fox, UPN and WB in prime-time. The show was also #1 for its 8-11pm time period for the 12-34-year-old audience—a tribute to a wild affair that featured feuds between Janet Jackson and Renee Zellweger, Lars Ulrich and Shawn Fanning, Rage Against the Machine bassist Tim Commerford and New York City's finest, and Eminem and seemingly everybody else. In 1998, the show had an 8.2/13 share. Next year, expect the network to bring Arsenio Hall back as host.

Commerford and bodyguard, known simply as Perrin "Big Pete" Bentle were arrested after Commerford climbed a piece of the stage set during Limp Bizkit's acceptance of the award for Best Rock Video. When the bassist was finally lured down, a fight with the cops and security ensued. Commerford spent the night in jail and pled guilty to disorderly conduct at N.Y.'s Midtown Criminal Court early Friday (9/8). He was released on time served—not even a fine—though minutes later he climbed up Blink 182's midgets.

Rage guitarist Tom Morello, interviewed Friday morning on KROQ, joked that Commerford flipped out because of Britney Spears' version of the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction," "Though he loves her version of ‘2000 Light Years From Home.'"

The tight security surrounding the event wasn't enough to keep Commerford from crashing the stage (the band, after all, had just performed), but NYC cops, also dealing with the United Nations Millennium Summit and the U.S. Open, managed to arrest five men from the outside of Radio City Music Hall who were sexually abusing women by committing frottage. And we don't mean the Webster's definition: "the technique of creating a design by rubbing (as with a pencil) over an object placed underneath the paper." We're talking about getting sexual pleasure by rubbing up against others. Yeah, but it's a dry hump.