Today's teen flicking between MTV's Pimp My Ride, Channel U's diet of urban music and incessant ringtone ads, and Kerrang! TV's heavy rock brand extension might find it hard to believe, but music television was once thought of as a dangerous revolution that could destroy the recording industry.
It wasn't until stars like Madonna, Michael Jackson and George Michael broke through as a result of the medium's marketing clout that its full potential was realized. MTV's launch, in 1979, was one of the defining factors in shaping today's celebrity culture. Pop stars began spending more time at the gym and more money on plastic surgeons, and the successful artists were those who could combine music and image in a perfectly produced, expensively coiffured package. It's a formula that's been working nicely ever since -- for both bands and broadcasters.
As it gears up to celebrate the 25 years since Video Killed the Radio Star heralded its arrival, MTV proudly claims to be available in 481.5 million households in 179 countries, and to have launched more than 100 localized channels around the world. But that original "MTV generation" are now in their 30s and 40s, and rather than the recording industry, the iconic brand is, itself, under siege. Having reinvented itself several times to fight off the threat of other music channels, and with the increased availability of music across the media spectrum, some wonder whether its top-down approach has had its day.
MTV might still be a presence in the bedrooms of today's teenagers, but they'll also have a tinny track coming out of their mobile that was bluetoothed to them by a friend, and are grazing for hours on social networking sites like MySpace or Bebo, and self-selecting the videos they want to see on Yahoo's Launchcast, Google Video or 3 Mobile's video download service. Could MTV go the way of Top of the Pops or Smash Hits, other once unimpeachable music brands that withered once they ceased to be relevant?
Van Toffler, president of MTV Networks, insists not, because the company remains "relentlessly driven by our audience."
"We made the decision a long time ago not to grow old with each generation that passes through our ecosystem," he says.
Keeping MTV fresh and staying in touch with our audience is part of our DNA," adds Michiel Bakker, who oversees MTV's operations in the UK, Ireland and Nordic countries.
Everyone connected with MTV trumpets the way it moved into lifestyle programming -- The Osbournes, Pimp My Ride, Jackass -- to head off the threat of copycat music video channels as evidence of its ability to move with the times. But as all major broadcasters and publishers are finding, the media habits of today's teens are changing at bewildering speed.
MTV's latest evolution offers a clue as to where music television is going -- and the answer is away from television. It has already launched Overdrive around the world, a broadband television network that offers on-demand versions of programs and interviews, but it plans to launch an even bolder experiment.
Called Flux, it will be a replacement for the network's VH2 channel, but the television component will be augmented by the kind of user-generated content that has powered the rise of MySpace, video site YouTube, photo-sharing site Flickr and other so-called "Web 2.0" flavors of the month. Onscreen, a virtual representation, or "avatar," will represent the viewer in the style of a manga cartoon. They will be able to blog via their mobiles, vote for the video playlist and interact with one another via the Web.
"It's exciting and innovative," insists Angel Gambino, who was poached from the BBC to remodel MTV. "As long [as] we stay very responsive and very receptive to what the audience demands, it will be really successful."
MTV is not the only TV network raising its game. Andy Parfitt, the man who has overseen BBC Radio 1's recent renaissance, has also been charged with working out how to re-engage fickle teen audiences with the BBC as a whole. Music will play a big part, as will new digital platforms that merge audio, video and so-called "social software" that allows users to share and discuss music and television.
There are others vying for a slice of the same pie, however. In a world where 16 to 34 year olds are the advertising holy grail, music remains one of the best ways to reach them -- that's why Web sites and mobile phone companies are competing to establish themselves as the distribution platform of choice, and why corporate sponsors such as beer brands continue to pour millions into associating themselves with specific artists, festivals and holding their own one-off events. But as the number of distribution platforms multiplies, so does the competition for content.
"The model of releasing a track to radio then putting out a single four weeks later has changed," says Graeme Oxby, marketing director at mobile network 3, now selling 1 million audio and video music downloads a month.
He hopes that, as technology improves and a way is found to marry "video blogging" features with downloading services, the appeal of music on mobile phones will increase further.
Unsurprisingly, because they're getting paid for a mobile video download whereas they don't get paid to show their track on TV, labels are increasingly offering up exclusives. Hard-Fi recently made an alternative video especially for mobiles, while Robbie Williams, Madonna and James Blunt are among those who have premiered videos there. For new album launches, big Internet portals and mobile networks will now be jostling with MTV, other music channels, radio and TV stations to be first in line.
If Chris Anderson, editor of geek bible Wired, is to be believed, the unfettered choice, combined with new ways of finding music offered by the Internet, should be embraced. Rather than trekking around record fairs in dusty halls to find that elusive bootleg, it's there on your desktop.
Where once MTV had the power to make or break artists globally, the potential is now there for artists to use new media to their advantage, and allow 1,000 flowers to bloom. But while we may no longer want to be forcefed, we still need some guidance on what to watch and listen to.
"There's a lot of clutter and a lot of noise," says John Reid, head of global marketing at Warner International.
"MTV faces competition from the YouTubes and the MySpaces. It's so hard to break an act these days. We have to focus on fewer and fewer acts," he says.
Videos are still important, he adds, but they're just "part of the mix" alongside digital campaigns, mobile phones and all the rest.
Some fear that, far from acting as a democratizing force, the Internet will simply give rise to other gateways controlled by "big media." Chris DeWolfe, founder of MySpace, which now claims more than 87 million users worldwide and is credited with breaking a succession of acts and moving aggressively into video, insists not.
"One reason we've been so popular on the music side is because there's all these artists out there that didn't really have a voice," he says.
"They'd have their own Web site but no traffic. You can create a high-quality CD for a couple of thousand bucks but there wasn't the way to get that to the masses," he says. "The band in Manchester starting up couldn't reach fans in Dublin or Iowa or Australia. Now, it's totally globalized the fanbase for emerging artists."
Others aren't so sure. MySpace and others are facing similar questions to those posed by the launch of MTV a quarter of a century ago. In the same way as labels were initially wary of providing MTV with videos to build its advertising business for nothing, record labels are starting to grumble about providing free music to help Rupert Murdoch, whose NewsCorp owns MySpace, build his Internet strategy and bring in advertising dollars. Meanwhile, bands and fans alike are already on the lookout for the next MySpace. When everyone is grasping for that role of trusted guide to a catalogue of millions of tracks or videos or live performances, many are going to lose out in the scramble.
"People are consuming more music in more ways in more places and for longer than ever before. Sometimes you have to step back from the fact that distribution methods are becoming more complex and remind yourself that you're in the music industry," Wadsworth says.
"There will still be global superstars, they will just emerge in different ways," he says.
The original 1980s incarnation of MTV was a unifying force, while the Internet ushers in an era of unlimited choice. The very fact that certain videos live on in our collective memory -- Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer, Jackson's Thriller or Madonna's Material Girl -- is evidence of the power they once held. Just as this fragmenting, on-demand generation could be the last to have conversations about all watching the same childhood TV programs, so it is with music.
Whatever MTV's successor, you can bet it will be born not of a brainstorming session in the air-conditioned meeting rooms of a Viacom, News Corp or even the BBC but, in much the same way as the original, as the result of an outrageous hunch.
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