• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, February 13, 2007

The TV business is just like football: Tackling and blocking is necessary -- sometimes even sacking.

MTV has failed to become the next cool YouTube, MySpace, or Facebook. Not only that, but parent company Viacom's stock is down. Now the company's new chief honchos are looking for payback -- firings.

The company says it wants to move faster into the digital space -- and it needs to score a few touchdowns. Quickly. NBC and Disney want the same things.

But success doesn't always mean as much as you'd believe in entertainment, or in sports, for that matter. 

Take the San Diego Chargers. This year they had the best record in the NFL, going 14-2 -- all this after many years of being down in the dumps.  They make it into the playoffs and lose a close game to the New England Patriots. Still, a positive strong season overall.

What happens? Head coach Marty Schottenheimer is fired because he and the team's general manager couldn't agree on a new bunch of assistant coaches to work with Schottenheimer for next season. What about the 14-2 record? That apparently isn't as important.

In world of glaringly high-profile entertainment and sports, the formula is the same -- there isn't a clear one. Apparent success and definite failure have their own road maps -- sometimes, the same road maps.

If Schottenheimer's replacement can't get at least a 14-2 mark, one would guess the Chargers would be looking for another head coach after next season. But we can't be sure.

We sure understand when an  NFL owner says, "We like the direction the team is going" or "The head coach is leaving and we are looking to go in a new direction."

MTV staffers can indeed point to something off -- even if they don't like it and want to blame someone else for what they haven't become.  Early on Viacom CEO Tom Freston took the fall. Now hundreds of others will dance to the same song.

MTV is successful -- but of late it doesn't have the best regular season record of all the cable networks. We know where MTV needs to go -- into the land of increased profitability and, even more important, increased buzz among young adults and teens.

And who's to say it ends here? Should profitability not grow, should buzz just become a whimper, those 250 souls could be joined by another round of MTV lost souls a year from now -- all because they didn't tackle new business.