No one is ever going to mistake MTV for Fox News. But a look at just how far its ratings have sunk as it becomes even more deeply entrenched in leftist politics is a good indicator that even those with more moderate ideologies have had enough of the lunacy.

As reported by The Daily Wire, the numbers are in on this year’s VMAs, and they’re just abysmal. The once-monstrously-popular event was able to muster only 5.3 million viewers.

For some context, remember that America, overall, has about 330 million people living here. And about 42 million of those are ages 10 to 19, considered by many to be the ideal demographic for MTV. And against the backdrop of those numbers, the VMAs managed just a little over five million sets of eyeballs.

To put this year’s viewership number in additional, stark context, the VMAs had 10.3 million viewers as recently as 2014. This means that in a span of just three years, the broadcast has lost roughly half of its viewers.

So what’s going on? Is the shift toward overtly radical politics really to blame?

Some, like Roger Friedman of Showbiz 911, suggest that the Sunday night season finale of the wildly-popular HBO series Game of Thrones snatched up viewers that might have otherwise tuned in to the VMAs. That may be true. But that notion does nothing to explain why the viewer numbers for the VMAs have been sinking like a stone for years now. Indeed, Friedman also ponders if “disposable music” and “horrible performers” are partly to blame.

No arguing with that.

There’s something else eating away at the viewer numbers, though, something much more profound.

Here’s a hint: During the broadcast, the awards show actually played “F--- Donald Trump” by the “artist” YG during a commercial break. Here’s another: The producers included a segment where a descendant of Confederate general Robert E. Lee was brought out to speak and say, among other things, that “we can find inspiration in the Black Lives Matter movement.”

The Daily Wire piece, making note of these moments at the VMAs, believes the real problem with viewership is “MTV's insistence on deliberately alienating half the country.”

Now that makes sense.

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large