MTV on the defensive: Feeling the Wrath of online videos.
Posted August 29, 2006 — in Music News
Remember when MTV use to show your favorite videos?
Websites including Yahoo, Myspace and Youtube are using music videos and stealing MTV’s market share.
The music video strategy is a smart one for online companies, says David Hallerman, a senior analyst at eMarketer. After all, Internet advertising is a fast-growing market expected to bring in $16 billion this year alone, according to eMarketer projections, and advertisers particularly covet the teenage and young adult market.
Analysts say MTV can’t afford to be complacent. “Right now I don’t really view (competition) as a problem because MTV has an Internet presence and they are the main brand,” says Robert Routh, a managing director at Jefferies & Co. “Could it become a problem if Viacom doesn’t carefully monitor the situation as time goes on? Sure. If MTV continues to focus more on the television product, then it could become a problem. We saw that with AOL, which was the dominant player online for years. Now look at what has happened.”
Last week, MTV Networks purchased gaming site and online video outlet Atom Entertainment for $200 million (see BusinessWeek.com, 8/11/06, “I Want My GTV?”). Earlier this month, MTV’s college campus network acquired Y2M: Youth Media & Marketing Networks, a publisher of online college newspapers (see BusinessWeek.com, 8/3/06, “Viacom: I Want My Demographic”).
It has also acquired gaming sites Xfire and GameTrailers, along with indie film site IFILM. Last year, Viacom tried to acquire social networking giant MySpace, which also streams music videos from independent and major artists, but lost out to News Corp. (see BusinessWeek.com, 7/19/05, “News Corp.’s Place in MySpace”).
YouTube is handily beating nearly all of the traditional media outlets for traffic.
Last time I checked, MTV can give a damn about music videos. I doubt they even care about a loss of market share in the music video section. However, if they were losing market share in cheap/teen/low production cost/crappy reality TV then they would probably be nervous, because that for them would equal serious advertising dollars.
Secondly, I don’t think it is viable to even waste time on music videos on TV anymore. I think it worked well before the internet and high speed ISPs, but times have changed. Why sit around and sit through commercials when you have any music video at the tip of your fingers. Not only that but it is very likely that a band or song may not even show up on the show your watching. Video killed the radio star, and the internet killed the video star. Just a sign of time changing, and MTV was actually smart enough to hedge their bets with reality TV.
Comment by Saverio — August 29, 2006 @ 10:13 am
MTV. I dont even know where to begin. I agree with Saverio in the sense that e-videos are definetly bigger than TV videos, but I dont even see MTV in the picture. I’m 17 years old. MTV goes for my age group, but I cant remember the last time that I watched a video on MTV or on MTV.com. YouTube and Launch(yahoo) are the only 2 places that I ever watcha music video.
In my opinion, I think that if MTV expanded their horizons of music more that they would increase their audience. Pop and Rap are not the only styles of music out there and most of what they show isnt good music anyway.
They definetly have some stepping up to do especially if they want to get my crowd into them.
Comment by Andy — September 7, 2006 @ 10:13 am
ok… so i definitely agree…. mtv blows… it’s not music television anymore, any time i want to see a music video from mtv i have to go to their website and i rarely do that cuz of all the stupid advertising and it takes forever just to get to the band you want… YouTube is a plus, and Launch is good too haha but as for music on tv… fuse has my vote.. but they are even sellin out a lot.. i remember when they used to be my escape for rock videos… that’s turnin into a joke nowadays… 17 and can’t remember the last time i turned mtv on and saw an actual good music video. i’m with ya andy… c ya at school tomorrow
Comment by JON — September 7, 2006 @ 7:18 pm