TELEVISION REVIEW - VMAs have no rhythm - The attention-deficient, hyperactive award show plays like a trailer for the website. And don't even mention Britney.

People started twitching, feeling nauseated, blinking uncontrollably; they reached for their remotes in a desperate struggle against information overload. The show's assault on coherence drove a music-loving nation to its knees. A rumor spread that the creators of "Pokémon," the Japanese cartoon whose images once caused "television epilepsy" in scores of young children, had wrested control from the VMA's producers in some kind of plot to destroy the music industry once and for all.

OK, that didn't really happen. The VMAs were meant to entertain viewers, not destroy their minds. But this sorry response to the Net-ification of entertainment -- an attempt to create a television equivalent to an iPod playlist, with a little candid YouTube.com thrown in -- failed in a most unpleasant way.

The ceremony, newly relocated to the Palms casino in Las Vegas, was designed as a cyber-extravaganza, multitiered and remixable. The viewing experience only began with Sunday's live broadcast. It is unfolding now, on the network's website, where "remixed" versions of the program will feature artists' commentary, viewer-requested content, and longer versions of the performances shown on television.

That's great for those who want to stretch out their annual VMAs party until it frays and breaks. But by treating the televised ceremony as a sneak preview for what's available online, the show's producers did no one any favors.

Few artists got to perform full songs during the show; the cameras cut away midchorus. Award winners enjoyed little glory; the best new artist winner, the hip-hop group Gym Class Heroes, didn't even get a speech. The show's once-unpredictable patter was sliced to the bone, with only presenter Jamie Foxx going off script. When a fistfight ensued between resident band-aid Pamela Anderson's exes, Tommy Lee and Kid Rock, the MTV jocks seized upon the news tidbit like a scrap of Styrofoam in a shipwreck.