MTV: Still About The M (Well, Sometimes), But Less About The TV, Too?
from the up-next,-real-world-road-rules-challenge-MCMXI dept
MTV hardly shows music videos anymore, common thinking goes, instead focusing on mindless reality shows. But the network looks like it's preparing for the day when its cable network isn't the central focus of its business. Despite its rather slow start, MTV is beefing up its online offerings by using its TV programming just as a starting point for further content and interactivity, while today it announced it's buying a video-game company, spending $175 million to buy Harmonix, which develops music-related games, like Guitar Hero (and is a different company than that game's publisher, which is caught in the patent dispute we posted earlier). MTV's made plenty of moves over the years to expand beyond its core cable TV network with various products, founded on the oft-repeated cliche of the last decade that it's not a TV channel, it's a lifestyle brand. Certainly MTV has a strong brand, but it's probably more accurate to say that going forward, the company needs to embrace life as a media company, not as just a TV channel. The focus of its network programming creates a starting point for its brand, and it should build from there -- so buying a company that makes music-related video games is much smarter than buying a company that makes first-person shooters or something else that's less relevant, even though its products might be popular with the same demographic as MTV. Media companies need to be diversified across different media, and be able to reach their audience through a variety of platforms, but they need to make their offerings cohesive. For instance, that's why a MySpace music store makes sense, but a MySpace magazine doesn't.
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Wait...
Perhaps MTV can leverage that right with Guitar Hero and we can start having all kinds of popular rock songs without the licensing fiasco.
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MTV sucks...
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All music channels
Either you see it or you don't.
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Re: All music channels
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Re: All music channels
MTV deserves to fail. I watched them all the time when they started in the early '80's up through the mid 90's when they went down the crapper. No music and a bunch of crap reality shows. Reality shows are made exclusively for morons.
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Oh Well
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The positive side....
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Genius of MTV
Music videos are coo- One VJ is better than another-, why put on Game shows- why put on cartoons? it is all rap now? An Awards show? No music videos at all? all they do is Reality TV?
The minute you think MTV has gone in the crapper.. is the minute you should realize that your youth is gone.. Your MTV is gone as well as cool clothes, good music and everything is just way too loud.. Shut up old people (and bye the way.. I was too old when they stopped MTV Rocks back in the early 90's.)
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reality TV on MTV
When you think about this, connect these two thoughts. This reality show thing in my belief is one big GOVERNMENT RESEARCH PROJECT. Think about it MTV and Fox and all the major reality show distributers must be getting large endorsements from the government to conduct HUMAN RESEARCH STUDIES. So in order to recieve funds to the great amount they're receiving now they have to keep up with the reality show facade.
This allows the government to study human behavior in certain situations they can't normally view. They get the most average people that fit a certain profile stick them on the show and sit back and watch... mind you they see more than the thirty minute clips that we the viewers see. They see everything.
Some examples of this are in "Survivor." Obviously a show to see how people act when trying to compete for survival. "Fear Factor" to see how people act when pushed to their limits. You can pretty much apply this to any reality show.
I know this sounds sick. Which it is... but is it anymore sick than people actually wasting their life and watching the shows.
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outrage
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