« Appropriate scope | Main | First Austin Future Salon » Convergence killed the video star?MTV is catching onto convergence, and CEO Judy McGrath wants to deliver services across many devices. The real question is not so much how well MTV keeps up with the technology, it seems to me, but whether MTV, now an established company, has its finger on the pulse of its audience. My sense of that aligns pretty well with Lewis Black's. However Business Week is less cynical: ...if MTV is to stay a trendsetter, she'll have to maintain the same kind of anything-is-possible spirit she has encouraged since MTV's inception. The key, she says, is creating a space where people feel safe and unafraid to fail: "Falling flat on your face is a great motivator. So is accident." Her mantra: "The smartest thing we can do when confronted by something truly creative is to get out of the way." That's pretty much what happened when two young producers came to McGrath in the early 1990s with a new idea for a dramatic series that didn't require hiring actors or writers. McGrath was intrigued. The idea was to film seven people living in a New York City loft over several months, following the soap opera of their daily lives and dropping a soundtrack of new tunes behind it. MTV's The Real World debuted in 1992, and reality TV was born. Its 17th season is shooting now in Key West.It hadn't really hit me that MTV was responsible for "reality" shows... that doesn't inspire confidence. I'm not holding much hope for MTV convergence. jon posted this at 4:25 PM |
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