MTV Creates Social Media TV Show

Posted by Alvin Singh on
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 at 10:18 pm

In response to low prime time ratings, multimedia giant MTV is now creating a live talk show that uses various social media platforms during the program.  Advertisers were convinced that this would be MTVs biggest daytime talk show since TRL ended in November 2008.

As traditional media outlets battle to engage their audiences and produce relevant content, cable network MTV answered the call with the Alexa Chung Show. The after school show will interact with young viewers by updating social network sites Facebook and Twitter 24 hours a day allowing them to upload videos onto the program website.  This show comes at a time when MTV in the past three months lost 18% of its viewers who rather watch videos online than television.  Stephen Friedman, MTV president, mentioned that advertisers would be reaching the “millennial generation” – those born between 1980 and 2000 – if they purchased airtime during the program.

In a recent MCDM class we discussed a few possibilities why Twitter has not reached the youth market yet and how come micro blogging was not popular amongst teenagers.  The question remains, will MTV’s approach bring more young users to micro blogging or is this a risk for traditional media companies to take.  How will this change television networks reactions to compete with a new “culture of sharing”?