Close to his 61st birthday, the King of Pop's name has been removed by MTV from its prestigious Michael Jackson’s Video Vanguard Award. The award is presented each year at the MTV Video Music Awards to performers to encourage their achievements in music and film industry. The award was renamed in honour of Michael Jackson in 1991.
This year, however, the entertainment company has quietly dropped the singer's name from this award. Missy Elliot who won the prize this year did mention Michael's name despite it having vanished from all other promotions and display. The shift has outraged fans on twitter, and most of the responses speculate this to be a backlash of HBO’s controversial documentary “Leaving Neverland’’ where the late singer is accused of sexual abuse.
This year's VMA awards, however, is said to have hit an all-time low on viewership. The show has been witnessing a consistent drop in ratings, from 2.25 last year to 1.93 million this year.