Chris Rock brought the pain — and the eyeballs — to Sunday’s 2014 BET Awards.
The nearly four-hour show scored 7.9 million viewers last night, up from 2013’s 7.8 million audience. That total is good enough to make last night’s telecast cable’s most-watched awards show of the season.
The number also makes it the second-highest BET Awards to-date, trailing only 2009’s show, which played out as a tribute to Michael Jackson.
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The 2014 BET Awards also performed well on Twitter, with 10.9 million tweets generated by nearly 1.1 million authors — easily topping the night. The social media metric also beat out the Billboard Music Awards, the Golden Globes and People’s Choice Awards.
Stephen G. Hill, BET’s president of Music Programming and Specials and Lynne Harris Taylor, BET’s vice president of Specials, served as executive producers of the awards show, along with Jesse Collins, chief executive officer of Jesse Collins Entertainment.