MTV turns 25 in 2006. Like ESPN (coincidently, from the same era), MTV was a synonym for hipness. But, now that cachet is gone, to VH1 perhaps. No, the hipness thing belongs online and on Apple products nowadays.
MTV has a big viewership but as a young person being surveyed said,
“We watch it because it’s there,’.
That’s a pretty scary thing for a brand which prides itself for being ‘different’.
MTV had bid for the hot site of the moment Myspace but Rupert Murdock outbid Viacom, MTV’s parent company. But this shows MTV is serious about extending into different media formats - online, mobile, online video. It has already bought amateur short-film Web site IFILM and Neopets, the popular website fro kids. There is big money to be made from online activities. MTV currently earns about $150 million from its online forays and it aims to earn $500 million+ in three years.
The spread of Broadband means that it will have innovate more, and partner with all sorts of companies
Consumer Research, spread across all the media platforms and further branched into all genres and demographics also hold the key. Better consumer targeting gets you bigger dollars, of course.
But what MTV needs most is to retain its trendsetter’s image, it must have the same kind of ‘anything-is-possible’ spirit and foster the same culture where failure is acceptable. Look at Apple for ideas.
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