MTV Turns 25

NEW YORK, August 1: As MTV in the U.S. celebrates its 25th
anniversary, the network’s executive VP of multiplatform programming, content
strategy and scheduling, Paul A. DeBenedittis, speaks to World Screen Newsflash
about how the service has evolved since launching with The Buggles’ Video
Killed the Radio Star.

What do you want to offer your viewers today?

We want to be all things in the scope of pop culture. That
includes music-based series as well as series focused on pop culture. We like
to believe we’re basically leading the trends, leading on reality and
entertainment, always with music front and center.

Who is your target demo today?

We’re targeting 12 to 34, but [it would be wrong] for anyone
to assume that what a 14 year old watches is something that a 30 year old is
going to watch. We recognize that, so our schedule grows with our demo. In the
afternoon it's really core for the high school viewer, the younger viewer. As
the day progresses we get broader and broader. Some series skew more male, some
more female, we recognize that and schedule accordingly. But ultimately our big
play is 12 to 34.

What have been some of your signature shows?

Laguna Beach this
past year as well as The Real World,
going on season 17, which continues to be one of our hits. We launched The
Hills, we are about to launch Laguna
Beach season three with an all new cast,
and we just broke ground on a new Thursday night of programming with a
90-minute block of originals, including Nick Cannon’s Wild ’N Out, which has been fantastic. That was really a
concentrated effort for us to step up on comedy and it was certainly a step in
the right direction. Run’s House
and Pimp My Ride and Making
the Band 3 [complete the Thursday lineup].

How do you stay fresh and relevant to your viewers?

We do shorter flights than most networks. Very few series on
MTV will last 20 episodes. We’ll do shorter flights so that we’re in and out.
We entice and then we move on to the next thing. It really delivers to our
viewers’ appetite. They are fickle. The other piece is our development
team—they’re constantly out there looking for the next thing. We’re
constantly in synch with who our demo is, what their lifestyle is like, what
they’re looking for. We rely tremendously on research as well to constantly
feed us on what our demo wants. We are servicing a specific niche; we’re not
looking for the broad masses.

Reality has worked well for you. What about scripted
programming?

It is something we’d like to do more of. It is a bigger
risk. We have not done a tremendous amount of it in years past. Most recently
our biggest hits have been in animation, with Celebrity Death Match and Where My Dogs At? We’re about to launch some additional animation for
the first quarter. We just picked up Crank Yankers from Comedy Central.

How much of your programming is original, and how much is
acquired?

Ninety-five percent is original. We do very few
acquisitions, primarily because we truly feel we have that secret sauce and
we’re such a strong brand and if something is coming off another network it was
by and large developed and thought of for that network. That’s not to say we
ignore them. What we have done in the past three years is ET on MTV, but as much as that is an acquisition of the ET
brand, it is an original version of the show. We’ll do some DVD specials here
and there, music-based specials. We love co-productions, we love to work with
international partners on financing and production. But our strategy is that we
are a content machine.

How closely do you work with your colleagues at MTV
channels around the world?

We have a great partnership with our colleagues across the
globe. While they are always receptive to taking our content and using it, we
hope that we are also developing formats that they’re able to use and showcase.
We also hope that the development teams we have internationally bring us ideas
that we’re inspired by. They did a show a long time ago, I think it was a
Korean boy band acting as the Backstreet Boys, and it was really wonderful and
so celebratory of the music and the culture, and we said, there’s a show here,
and that’s what launched Becoming. We do
international conferences where we get to talk about what’s working in our
territories, what are our greatest hits, what’s the latest in development, and
really share ideas. There’s nothing better than having a global perspective for
the MTV brand.

What are you doing in terms of pro-social initiatives?

It’s something that has been front and center for many, many
years. We believe that with all the great entertainment programming we do, we
also have a responsibility to educate our demo. We have a variety of HIV
specials. We have our new campaign, THINK, which basically just puts out there
the concept of HIV education, [the environment], whatever issue it is, and we
will provide a tremendous amount of information on our website, so if it's an
area you're interested in, there is a place you can go to and get much more
information than we could ever offer in a half-hour special. We have an HIV
special coming up. And we're doing a THINK special, I’m Returning to the
Gulf Coast. We did a special on the Iraqi
war. This is a war where folks are sending video back home, uploading content
to their phones, and people are getting a unique perspective, it’s an amazing
story.

What is your multiplatform strategy?

Multiplatform is really core to us. It’s been that way for
at least a year now. We understand that our audience is going to many different
places. They’re on their cell phones, they’re watching linear, they’re going to
their computers, they’re looking for video content. We have a wonderful site in
MTV.com and we have the video player Overdrive. So as much as possible we are
creating both original content for our site, as well as what I call the “deep
dive”—content that plays from linear. When a show runs on linear we’ll
have an after-show that is created exclusively for Overdrive and that really
allows you to get the deep dive. So the linear experience doesn’t end. In
addition we have content on our wireless platform and VOD.

As everyone tries to figure out what the models are for the
multiplatform world, and I don't pretend to have it all worked out, we’re in it
every step of the way. We’re creating so much content for multiplatform, but
that’s basically what our viewers are demanding. It’s where they are, and
that's certainly where MTV is going to be.