At social events the subject of MTV comes up every so often and people joke about - what happened to the music videos? It is true, if you watch MTV for an hour or so you'll be hard pressed to find a music video. What happened to the music videos (MTV's core programming)? The music videos are gone replaced by snippets and a variety of shows. More importantly their audience doesn't care. Even MTV's TRL (Total Request Live) doesn't play any full length music videos anymore.
Why the change? My guess is that MEDIA and the consumer has changed - sort of why I decided to make this my first post.
MTV's consumer has changed so dramatically over the last 10 years that MTV no longer resembles what they were in 1999. Music videos don't sell products (end of story). When was the last time that a music video touted AMP, Crocs or Axe Body Spray? The Real World (one of MTV's shows) is a much better vehicle for MTV's sponsors to put product placements in front of consumers. The Real World cast of characters drink, wear and use products just like the consumers that MTV is trying to market to.
There's another reason why music videos don't bode well for marketing. Many of them are too short. A typical music video is four minutes in length, but the attention span of the MTV consumer is a lot less than that. Research shows one minute or less is the typical attention span especially if it is an artist or song that the consumer doesn't particularly care for. So the bandwidth for advertising is extremely short = ing the result no music videos.
No fault to MTV on any of this. MTV simply changed it's core television structure to fit their consumers and I'm sure they already have plans to change it again seeing that consumers are absorbing music in a variety of different channels.
Thoughts????
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