Last Sunday night, I noticed multiple posts on Facebook about Kanye West’s inappropriate actions at the MTV Video Music Awards, where he interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech.

Since the program was delayed on the West Coast where I live, I naturally went to social media to see what the fuss was about.

To my surprise, every video I tried to play was interrupted by a message saying the content was removed by Viacom.

Much has been discussed the past few days about Viacom’s decision to make VMA-related content available only on MTV or MTV.com. Viacom has been actively removing clips and content where they see it posted. Forums, message boards, UGC sites and blogs all had clips that had to be removed or wouldn’t play.

While Viacom is still engaged in a lawsuit with Youtube, my guess is their actions are as much about controlling content as driving traffic to their site and advertising supported video player.

As mentioned in the New York Times, “According to the Twitter account for Hill Holliday, a communications and marketing agency, a single video of Mr. West’s outburst registered 500,000 viewers and got pulled by Viacom within 20 minutes.  Hill Holliday credited Twitter for spreading word of the incident so swiftly.”

What Viacom and MTV may not understand is that by only making content available on their properties, they are limiting the potential for fans to engage with the content in popular social channels, which creates more conversation, word of mouth, and potential for tune in.

At the end of the day, while consumers may or may not view the content at MTV, it’s equally, if not more important, to make sure the content reaches them where they engage.