Media Buyers Still Want Their MTV, Avoid TV Land

MTV's continued ability to successfully reinvent itself and maintain its dominance as a magnet for young viewers has media buyers waxing exultant regarding the network's upfront presentation in New York on Tuesday. However, there is somewhat less enthusiasm for some of the network's properties.

Last week, the network presented a scaled-down, 45-minute version of its new season sales pitch to buyers and marketers in Chicago, and buyers were pleased with what they heard.

MTV showed off a half-dozen new shows, with titles such as "Trailer Fabulous," "The Andy Dick Reality Show," and "The Andy Milonakis Show," which is being produced by Jimmy Kimmel, with the rest in keeping with the format of MTV's alternative programming that tends to be reality-themed.

"MTV gets who their audience is and they deliver a very unique product," said Tom Weeks, entertainment director, Starcom Entertainment, who attended MTV's Chicago fete. "It's destination television for those 12- to-24 audiences, and beyond. Every season, they have at least one show that becomes the breakout hit--a few years ago it was "Punk'd," "Newlyweds"--I think that the 'Andy Dick Show' could be the one this year. They're always on the cusp of where pop culture is going, and catching that wave of lightning in a bottle."

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In addition to previewing its show, MTV hinted that a deal with Virgin Mobile would lead to programming for cell phones and other digital, portable devices, which also cheered media buyers.

"MTV has one of the best brands in the business, and the network has a special appeal for early adopters, so expanding the brand into digital music platforms and putting short-form content on cell phones makes a lot of sense," said Brad Adgate, senior vice president, director of research, Horizon Media.

MTV is seen as the one network that would be able to truly bring portable TV content to a wider audience.

"MTV strives to put on programming that best represents pop icons and the appeal they have," said Shari Ann Brill, vice president, director of programming for Carat USA. "A lot of their programming is aspirational, and therefore has a great appeal to innovators and trendsetters. Through MTV, the trends trickle down so that soon enough, old geezers are telling people to 'chill.' But they're always able to keep a few steps ahead and remain edgy."

As many cable networks have matured and struggled to craft new identities, MTV's shift from music videos to offbeat reality programming has been gradual and earlier than its competition, media buyers noted, which has been part of the reason for the success.

"Like a lot of the original cable networks--A&E, Discovery, come to mind--MTV has gotten farther and farther away from where it began," said another veteran media buyer. "But since anyone with an Internet connection can download a video, MTV has successfully reinvented itself in a way that constantly maintains its pop culture currency."

But the danger, MTV finds--and this may be why the long-running Real World series has seen its ratings dip a bit this past year, Adgate noted--is that its programming style is being increasingly adopted by the mainstream. After all, the Real World helped kick off reality television, so it stands to reason that a show like that could lose its edge after a while, buyers said. Even extreme sports, which has been a staple of the channel for a while, has gained some mainstream acceptance.

The other challenge is the sometimes uncertain moves of its Viacom sister networks.

"Take a look at TV Land -- they've got 'Chasing Farrah,' a poor imitation of MTV's celebreality genre," said one media buyer. "And at some point the whole 'celebreality' genre is going to get saturated. I don't think we're at that point yet. But we're getting there pretty fast."

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