Last year's VMAs boasted the highest ratings since 2002, bringing in 11.4 million viewers and making it the No. 1 cable telecast of 2010 for the MTV network.

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Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif Cohen highlighted both Grey and former McKinsey consultant Michael Wolff, whom Freston hired as MTV Network's chief operating officer, as "unusual" hires that might get scrutiny in the near future.

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That comes a year after the network launched MTV Overdrive, a multimedia Web site that generates only a small fraction of the traffic that Yahoo!

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