Georgia Arnold

TV Real Weekly, September 3, 2008

Senior VP, Social Responsibility,

MTV Networks International

Executive Director, Staying Alive Foundation

Ten years ago, when Georgia Arnold was working on a program on HIV and AIDS prevention, she had no idea that it would evolve into a worldwide campaign that would bring together MTV Networks International, Family Health International, the Kaiser Family Foundation and UNAIDS, among other organizations.

“We wanted to do it because we knew then, and unfortunately it’s still the case today, that our audience around the world needs really good sexual health and HIV prevention messages—messages that they can respond to and relate to,” Arnold says. “So we did a one-off documentary hosted by George Michael about three young people and how their lives had been affected and infected by HIV. And off the back of that, the campaign grew. The following year I spoke with all the MTV channels and they asked, ‘What are you delivering for World AIDS Day?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, wow!’ It suddenly occurred to us here that there actually was this great opportunity, that people want information.”

This year, MTV Networks International’s Staying Alive celebrates its tenth anniversary and the campaign has grown immeasurably. It doesn’t produce programming only in occasion of World AIDS Day, held on December 1 each year, it creates documentaries, public-service announcements, youth forums and web content year round. And the mission is to make this content available to as many people as possible.

“We decided way back when that it was great that the MTV channels wanted to pick up the programming, but what was absolutely crucial was that there are a lot of other broadcasters who reach different audiences than MTV’s,” explains Arnold. “We decided from day one that everything we produce would be rights- and cost-free. So we can give it away. If you are a young person who’s seen the program and want to watch it with a group of friends at university, we’d give it to them for free. Also, and crucially, we’d give it away to other broadcasters. And it wasn’t about subversively getting the MTV logo out there because we told broadcasters they could take the MTV logo off if they wanted. It’s about getting approved messages from UNAIDS out to as many people as possible.” To Arnold’s knowledge, no broadcaster yet has removed the MTV logo from the programming.

Besides the Staying Alive campaign, Arnold also oversees Switch. “Staying Alive is HIV prevention and Switch is about climate change,” she notes. She will greenlight programs on other subjects as well, but as she explains, “They need to be topical and we need to know that these are big issues for them.”

Arnold and her team have produced a number or one-offs. “We did a program with Nelson Mandela to commemorate his 85th birthday and we realized that unfortunately most of our audience outside of MTV-based Africa probably doesn’t know who Nelson Mandela is. They may have heard of him but don’t know what his story is. So we told his story using library footage, but we also took four young people to meet with him. One of them was HIV positive. One was a young Arab girl whose father had been killed by the Israeli army. One was a young Israeli boy whose sister had been murdered by a suicide bomber and one was a Burmese boy who was living in exile in Thailand. And through each of their stories we were able to highlight some of the issues that Mandela has had to deal with through the years.”

Arnold was instrumental in establishing the Staying Alive Foundation in 2004, and was appointed its executive director in October 2007. The Foundation is a global charitable body that provides grassroots grants for supporting HIV and AIDS awareness education and prevention campaigns.

“Occasionally people will say to me, ‘Look you’ve been doing Staying Alive for ten years, let’s shut it down and move on,’ but actually every year there is a new generation of young people who may or may not be sexually active, but sex is at the forefront of their minds,” says Arnold. “So there is always an audience there to talk to about how they can protect themselves and look after themselves.

“There isn’t a vaccine for HIV so media is the vaccine and it’s absolutely crucial in order to get info out there,” she continues. “I’m privileged to work for a global network, MTV. On Worlds AIDS Day they pretty much give over 24 hours of the schedule on all of the MTV channels around the world to the Staying Alive campaign. Media can influence for the good or for the bad and MTV has often been criticized in terms of the way that we influence our audience. So we can use our airwaves for the good and really have an influence and that’s crucial.”

For this year’s World AIDS Day coverage, MTV is airing its largest multiplatform program offering to date, allowing for various issues to be addressed. From an hour-long celebrity-driven video diary featuring inspirational youth leaders in their communities and an hour-long documentary looking at the impact of masculinity on HIV/AIDS, to a series of shorts with young people talking candidly about sex, sexuality and living with HIV/AIDS, this year’s content will have views from every continent as well as never-before-seen celebrity interviews on sex in a time of AIDS.

—By Anna Carugati