Mallis Portfolio 2013

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Artisit StatementI decided to base my 6 X 6 off of the art movement surrealism. I chose to do surrealism because I have never attempted to paint anything like it before and I had always thought that the whole movement was interesting. When doing some research I came across a work of art by Román Cortés called “Dalí Does Escher.” I liked the combination of Dalí’s “The Persistence of Memory” and Escher’s “Hand with Reflecting Sphere.” I used those pieces as my inspiration for my work and then gave it some personal meaning. I have always liked the melting clocks in Dalí’s work so I chose to do a spinoff of that in mine by changing the clock into an I Phone. I took the sphere from Escher’s work and morphed it into a teardrop shape. I think it does really resemble the “Dalí does Escher” piece of work but at the same time it is very different. Overall I am happy with what I did because I have never done anything even remotely similar to surrealism let alone have painted it.

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Futurism and theNew Manifesto

800 225 5624mag.rochester.edu

Memorial Art Gallery500 University AveRochester, NY

Feburary 20, 2009 6:30pm

Umberto Boccioni was an Italian painter and sculptor who infl uenced the aesthetics of Futurism. He began the Futurism movement with his manifesto that was published in 1909. Since then Futurism has spread throughout the art world. Guest speaker Joshua Mehigan will recount historical works along with his own contemporary manifesto.

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Artist Statement

Society often makes us think that some things are more ideal than another. I decided to question what society says and kind of show how ridiculous some of our ideals are. In our culture now a day the most ideal woman is very thin and of course has those womanly curves. Although this is the ideal, most women do not have this body shape which makes no sense because how is this what everyone wants when it is the shape most difficult to obtain. This project is important because we need to reshape the ideals of our society. Not every woman has the perfect body and not everybody likes the aforementioned body type but society still throws it at us wherever we look. I used photography that I found on the Internet and Photoshop to create an image that conflicts with what society says is the best. I wanted to have people question my project because of the huge numbers on the measuring tape that opposes the skinny girl that is measuring her waist. I believe that this is a problem that society needs to address and maybe this could be one step towards fixing it.

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Cabl

e te

levis

ion

mad

e MTV

bot

h po

ssib

le a

nd n

eces

sary

. . T

houg

h it

had

been

in u

se -

deliv

erin

g ne

twor

k br

oadc

asts

to re

mote

parts of th

e US via surplus military coaxial cable

wee

k. Fu

rther

mor

e, M

TV's

succ

ess a

s a p

latfo

rm to

sel

l was

imm

edia

tely

app

aren

t as '

63 p

erce

nt o

f the

surv

ey re

spon

dents

said th

ey purchased an artist's album after

dubi

ous �

nanc

ial fo

otin

g, th

e im

port

ance

of M

TV b

ecam

e ap

pare

nt e

arly

on.

But

this

impo

rtan

ce w

as n

o ac

cide

nt. M

TV’s p

op cultu

ral prowess was the product of intense

s ince the early 1950s, cable emerged as a key US growth industry internatio

nally in th

e mid-1

970s and ea

rly 1

980s

. On

the

�rst

Tue

sday

of M

arch

1 981, after much planning on how to penetrate the expanding basic cable marke, th

e W

arner-A

mex

Sate

llite E

nter

tain

men

t Com

pany

laun

ched

MT

V

a 24-hour 'video music network', that would radiate its �rst programming roughly �ve m

onths l

ater

on 1 A

ugus

t. Tho

ugh

with

out m

uch

fanf

are

and

on

e ven more importantly, Pittman's participant-observation practices, relatin

g the qualita

tive exp

erien

ce o

f his

own

'psy

chog

raph

ic' g

roup

, his

sta

tus

as

the music into all of our radio and TV spots. If you have a single... [

Irene Cara's '

What a Fe

eling'] p

layin

g on

the r

adio

, the

spot

s are

like

cro

ss-p

oll

pollination. This process was perhaps summed up best by Gary LeMel, Columbia Pictu

res'

Colfax d

ivisi

on e

xecu

tive,

Hol

lyw

ood

sees

a w

ay to

get

to distil such emotions, for understanding how to

better p

redict its t

arget

dem

ogra

phic'

s pre

fere

nces

and

hab

its, b

ut fu

r the

r

or in Raymond Williams' terms, stru

ctures of feelin

g into persu

asive m

oods or e

mot

ive cu

rrenc

y to

bet

ter i

nspi

re it

s cu

ltu

r

al authority. Viacom purchased the MTV Netw

orks in Septe

mber o

f 198

5; it

also

acqu

ired

from

War

ner C

omm

unic

ati o

ns

t

he second half interest in

Showtime. Viacom's a

cquisitio

n of the M

TV N

etw

orks

repr

esen

ted

a sy

nerg

y w

ithin

a s

yn

as the umbrella company already included several c

hannels: M

TV, N

ickel

odeo

n an

d VH

-1. H

owev

er, M

TV it

self

wa

was the most im

portant property

in the M

TV N

etwork

s. The n

etw

ork's

abilit

y to

capt

ivat

e yo

ung

audi

ence

s t h

r

r

atings in the early 1990s, MTV has a

lway

s rem

ained

auth

orita

tive

in p

op c

ultu

re p

rodu

ctio

n, i n

no small p

art because of it

s relentle

ss se

arch

for e

mer

gent

cultu

ral f

orm

s fo

r inc

orpo

ratio

incorporatio

n into its pro

ductions.

This

feed

back

pro

cess

is c

alle

d 'c

ool h

untin

g' w

where researchers visi

t teens'

homes

, han

gout

in th

eir b

edro

oms a

nd le

arn

w

hat moves t

hem emotio

nally,

aesth

etica

lly. S

ome

such

rese

arch

ers

w

ants to

'cre

ate a

whole n

ew b

rand

or...

pro

duct

with

a com

pany t

hat ta

rget

s a sp

eci�

c

audience,' e

xplai

n D. G

ordo

n

rese

arch

and

the

culm

inat

ion

of n

ew te

chni

ques

and

tech

nolo

gies

. Whi

le b

road

cast

telev

ision had

develo

ped ar

ound a paradigm of replicating

Thei

r sur

veys

pro

vide

d ev

iden

ce th

at 8

5 pe

r cen

t of t

hose

pol

led

expr

esse

d ex

citem

ent o

ver a

cable ch

annel

that

merg

ed televisio

n and rock anl

, whi

ch w

as u

sed

to e

licit

the

coop

erat

ion

of th

e re

cord

com

pani

es, a

dver

tiser

s and

cable

operato

rs needed to

launch

the project. B

ut it

succ

essf

ul sh

ow fo

rmul

as a

nd st

rivin

g fo

r bro

ad p

opul

arity

, the

pro

lifer

atio

n of

cabl

e infra

struct

ure deve

loped

conco

mita

ntly w

ith programming

a

s a c

ultu

ral d

oubl

e ag

ent,

met

abol

izin

g th

e de

tails

of h

is liv

ed e

xper

ienc

es th

at w

ere c

entra

l to its

succ

ess.

In O

ctober o

f 1982 AC Nielsen rel

a lo

t of [

free]

adv

ertis

ing

and

mar

ketin

g fo

r its

targ

et a

udie

nce.

The

targ

et au

dience

for M

TV is th

e sam

e targ

et fo

r pictures. Y

ou need the

12

to 2

5 de

mog

raph

ic. B

ut, M

TV's

inno

vatio

ns in

vid

eo m

usic

also

rede

�ned

the s

truct

ure of p

op expre

ssive fo

rms. I

n the early 1980s,

Pitt

man

, co-

foun

der o

f MTV

, com

men

ts o

n th

e st

ylist

ic in

nova

tions

dev

elop

ed b

y MTV: W

hat w

e've in

troduce

d with

MTV is a

non-na

for

m. A

s opp

osed

to co

nven

tiona

l tel

evisi

on, w

here

you

rely

on

plot

and

contin

uity, w

e rely on m

ood and emotion. W

e make you

fe

el a

cer

tain

way

as o

ppos

ed to

you

wal

king

aw

ay w

ith a

ny p

artic

ular

know

ledge. H

e contin

ues with

a McC

luhanian sense of

opp

ortu

nism

, You

're d

ealin

g w

ith a

cultu

re o

f TV

babi

es..,

wha

t kid

s can

't do to

day is

follo

w things t

oo long. T

hey get bored a

di

stra

cted

, the

ir m

inds

wan

der.

If in

form

atio

n is

pres

ente

d to

them

in ti

ght f

ragm

ents th

at don't n

ecessa

rily

follo

w each other

, k

ids c

an c

ompr

ehen

d th

at. P

art o

f MTV

's in

nova

tive

dom

inan

ce h

as b

een not s

imply co

ncocti

ng new form

s of su

rveillance

its q

uick

pac

e an

d �a

shy

grap

hics

mad

e it

a va

luab

le as

set f

or adve

rtisin

g reve

nue and its st

yle was b

ecomi

p

opul

ar a

nd h

ighl

y in

�uen

tial i

n ot

her m

edia

. In 19

96 th

e MTV N

etworks l

aunched M

TV-2,which would

allo

w M

TV to

focu

s mor

e on

airi

ng tr

aditi

onal

pro

gram

ming, ra

ther t

han music

videos. Desp

ite slo

uch

, lik

e at

Look

-Loo

k, co

ntra

ct o

ut their s

ervice

s. If a

client w

a

stra

tegi

es o

f tar

getin

g ke

y (t

hose

with

hig

h sp

endi

ng p

ower

) aud

ienc

es, k

now

n as

'qua

lity

dem

ogra

phics

'. Thu

s, au

dience

rese

arch w

as no lo

nger only a

a w

ay o

f mea

surin

g po

pula

rity

afte

r the

fact

, but

rath

er a

way

of p

rodu

cing

pop

ular

ity th

roug

h th

e co

nstru

ctio

n of a

targ

et audience“. W

hen Bob Pittman

it e

ntai

led,

and

inte

nsify

ing

a st

rate

gic,

if u

neve

n, c

onve

rgen

ce o

f the

mea

ns o

f cul

tura

l exp

ress

ion. A

s the m

usic in

dustry became in

creaslin

i

nsep

arab

le fr

om m

usic

vid

eos a

nd M

TV's

livin

g ro

om m

arke

ting

plat

form

, so

too

did

Holly

wood. In

the early

1980s, movie so

undtracks

bec

ame

criti

cal c

ompo

nent

s of �

lm m

arke

ting,

revo

lvin

g ar

ound

the

mar

riage

of p

opul

ar m

usic arti

sts/ t

een idols w

ith th

e visual

dra

ma

of �

lm c

lips a

nd m

ini-m

ovie

trai

lers

. As G

ordo

n W

eave

r of P

aram

ount

Pict

ures e

xplains: T

hat's because th

e origin

o

rigin

al in

tent

of t

hese

mus

ic v

ideo

s is t

o pr

omot

e th

e m

ovie

, alth

ough

ther

e's sp

illoverb

ene�t to th

e record w

h

t

he m

ovie

is p

laye

d... [

Para

mou

nt P

ictu

res d

istrib

utes

the

clips

to M

TV and oth

er t

elevision outle

ts, as w

el

l

ocal

ly to

clu

bs.]

We

do th

is th

roug

h ou

r o�

ces i

n New

York

and our 4

3 advertisin

g agencies arou

coun

try.

..It's

a g

odse

nd. T

he d

emog

raph

ics ar

e so

per

fect

with

music

video. Paramount's

p

op c

lass

ic, F

lash

danc

e (1

983)

, bro

ke �

rst g

round in

this s

ort ofproductio

n

d

istrib

utio

n st

rate

gy. A

fter P

aram

ount spent c

lose to US $3

pro

mot

ing Fl

ashdan

ce, W

eaver explained: W

e

beg

an c

ondu

ctin

g re

sear

c h fo

r the

via

bilit

y of

a st

atio

n th

at c

ombi

ned

his g

ener

atio

n's t

wo

favo

rite p

astim

es w

atch

ing TV and lis

tening to

the

radi

o - i

t was

alre

ady

in th

e c o

ntex

t of t

he e

xist

ing

know

ledg

e th

at y

oung

urb

an a

dults

(esp

ecial

ly fe

male

s)aged

18-49 49 w

ere the prim

e consu

cons

umer

s of

the

type

s of

goo

ds a

dver

tised

on

TV'. T

hus,

Rolli

ng S

tone

Mag

azin

e de

scrib

ed Pi

ttman

's pen

chan

t for m

arket research and

a w

illi n

gnes

s to

disc

ard

trad

ition

al 'w

isdom

' in

favo

r of p

ursu

ing

the

'real

mea

ning

' of t

he d

ata c

ompile

d by p

hone calls

, sales- t

rend

anal

yses

and

sur

veys

of t

he M

ood

of th

e N

atio

n. M

TV b

egan

as a

n el

abor

ate

simul

tane

ous t

arget

ing an

d pro

duction of

both

an

audi

ence

and

form

s of

alre

ady-

popu

lar m

edia

cul

ture

. WAS

EC's

audi

ence

rese

arch

team

, led by M

arsh

all

Cohe

n, d

isco

vere

d th

at n

o ch

anne

l was

spec

i�ca

lly ta

rget

ingt

arge

ting

Amer

ica's

mos

t a�

uent d

emo

grap

hic

grou

p, p

ost-

war

'bab

y-bo

omer

s' ag

ed 1

2-34

and

beg

an te

stin

g th

e M

TV

conc

ept a

t len

gth

with

repr

esen

tativ

es o

f the

targ

et d

emo

Nielsen released a survey of MTV viewers, indicating 85 percent of the 2,000 re

spondents in the int

VP of Brand Strategy and Planning, explains ho

the corporation uses such 'instruments' to

simultaneously represent and direct p

popular culture: The research e�orts

at MTV are certainl

legendary. Ever since

beginning, there's been

a kind of feverish addicti

to research and understand

young people.... In virtually ev

meeting that we have, research

kicks the meeting o�. There's a signintended demographic group watched MTV, and those that did viewed it a

n average of 4.6 hours a

and S. Lee, Look- Look co-founders, they take out information to assist in

inspiring project d

esig

in helping them market the new product,even in naming the product, and th

en eventually test

They use our database to recruit kids to test the products out, s

tu� like th

at. But such apparatus

Networks. The network's ability

to captivate young aud

audiences througand �ash

viewing a cli

p fe

atur

ing

the

artis

t's m

usic

'. Thi

s suc

cess

invo

lved

bot

h ex

pand

ing

venu

es fo

r eng

agin

g th

e 19

80s'

pop

cultu

re exp

losion and th

e excitement

of industrial cultural production, social research, are also further enclosed as competit preferences and habits, but further to distil such emotions, or in Raymond Williams’

terms, structures of feeling into persuasive moods or emotivecurrency to better

inspire its cultural authority. Viacom purchased the MTV Networks in Septem

of 1985; it also acquired from Warner Communications the second half

interest in Showtime. Viacom's acquisition of the MTV Network represented a synergy within a synergy, as the umbrella co company already included several channels: MTV,

Nickelodeon and VH-1. However, MTV itself was the most important property in the MTV

its quick pac grap

investments. This ability to create its own proprietary research, employed to realize st

or more authoritative monopoly rent, has been critical to maintaining MTV's cultur

authority. Todd Cunningham, MTV's Senior VP of Brand Strategy and Planning, e

how the corporation uses such 'instruments' to simultaneously represent and

it entailed, and intensifying a strategic, if uneven, convergence of the means

trailers. As Gordon Weaver of Paramount Pictures explains: That’s beca

use because the original intent of these music videos is to promote th

movie, although there's spillover bene�t to the record when the movi

strategy. After Paramount spent close to US $3 million prom

Flashdance, Weaver explained: We incorporated the music

into all of our radio and TV spots. If you have a single... [Ire

for its target audience. The target audience for M

is the same target for pictures. You need the 12

to 25 demographic. But, MTV's innovations in

video music also rede�ned the structure of p

we've introduced with MTV is a non-n

narrative form. As opposed to conve

with a culture of TV babies

what kids can't do today

been not si

simply con

to be

of c

ultu

ral e

xpre

ssio

n. A

s the

mus

ic in

dust

ry b

ecam

e in

crea

sing

ly in

sepa

rabl

e fr

om m

usic

vid

eos a

nd M

TV's

is

pla

yed.

.. [Pa

ram

ount

Pic

ture

s dis

trib

utes

the

clip

s to

MTV

and

oth

er te

levi

sion

out

lets

, as w

ell

cl

ubs.]

We

do th

is th

roug

h ou

r o�

ces

in N

ew Y

ork

and

our 4

3 ad

vert

isin

g ag

enci

es a

roun

d th

e

cou

ntry

...It's

a g

odse

nd. T

he d

emog

raph

ics a

re so

per

fect

with

mus

ic v

ideo

. Par

amou

nt's

sau

cy

pop

clas

sic,

Fla

shda

nce

(198

3), b

roke

�rs

t gro

und

in th

is s

ort o

f pro

duct

ion

and

dist

ribut

[I

rene

Car

a's '

Wha

t a F

eelin

g'] p

layi

ng o

n th

e ra

dio,

the

spot

s ar

e lik

e cr

oss-

polli

nati.

Th

is pr

oces

s was

per

haps

sum

med

up

best

by

Gar

y Le

Mel

, Col

umbi

a Pi

ctur

es' C

ol

d

ivisi

on e

xecu

tive,

Hol

lyw

ood

sees

a w

ay to

get

a lo

t of [

free]

adv

ertis

ing

and

po

p ex

pres

sive

form

s. In

the

early

198

0s, B

ob P

ittm

an, c

o-fo

unde

r of

MTV

, com

men

ts o

n th

e st

ylis

tic in

nova

tions

dev

elop

ed b

y M

TV: W

ha

te

levi

sion

, whe

re y

ou re

ly o

n pl

ot a

nd c

ontin

uity

, we

rely

on

mo

and

em

otio

n. W

e m

ake

you

feel

a c

erta

in w

ay a

s op

pose

d to

you

wal

king

aw

ay w

ith a

ny p

artic

ular

kno

wle

dge.

He

co

w

ith a

McC

luha

nian

sens

e of

opp

ortu

nism

, You

're d

is fo

llow

thin

gs to

o lo

ng. T

hey

get b

ored

and

d

istr

acte

d, th

eir m

inds

wan

der.

If in

form

atio

i

s pre

sent

ed to

them

in ti

ght f

ragm

ents

th

at d

on't

nece

ssar

ily fo

llow

eac

h ot

h

k

ids c

an c

ompr

ehen

d th

at. P

art o

f

M

TV's

inno

vativ

e do

min

ance

has

new

form

s of

surv

eilla

nce

for u

nder

stan

ding

how

pred

ict i

ts ta

rget

d

emo

livin

g ro

om m

arke

ting

plat

form

, so

too

did

Hol

lyw

ood.

In th

e ea

rly 1

980s

, mov

ie

soun

dtra

cks

beca

me

criti

cal c

ompo

nent

s of �

lm m

arke

ting,

re

volv

ing

arou

nd th

e m

arria

ge o

f pop

ular

m

usic

art

ists/

teen

idol

s with

the

visu

al d

ram

a of �

lm

clip

s and m

ini-m

ov

mad

e it

a va

luab

le a

sset

for a

dver

tisin

g re

venu

e an

d its

styl

e w

as b

ecom

ing

popu

lar a

nd h

ighl

y in

�uen

tial i

n ot

her m

edia

. In

1996

the

MTV

Net

wor

ks la

unch

ed M

TV-2

, which

would allo

w M

TV to fo

cus more on airin

g traditio

nal programming, rather

This

feed

back

pro

cess

is c

alle

d 'co

ol h

untin

g', w

here

rese

arch

ers v

isit

teen

s' ho

mes

, han

gout

in th

eir b

edro

oms

and

lear

n w

hat m

oves

them

em

otio

nally

, aes

thet

ically

. Som

e such

rese

archers,

like at L

ook-Loo

right

ther

e to

the

orga

niza

tion

that

,' Hey

, you

've

got t

o pa

y at

tent

ion

to w

hat t

he v

iew

ers

are

abou

t and

wha

t kin

ds o

f thi

ngs a

re h

appe

ning

with

them

,' whe

the

its q

uasi

-soc

ial s

cien

tists

to p

eopl

e's h

omes

'whe

re [t

hey]

get

the

grea

t cha

nce

to a

ctua

lly g

o ou

t and

ri�e

thro

ugh

kids

' clo

sets

and

go th

roug

h th

eir m

usic

coll

Onc

e a

year

, MTV

rese

arch

ers p

erfo

rm w

hat t

hey

call,

'eth

nogr

aphy

'. Cun

ning

ham

det

ails

: An

ethn

ogra

phy

stud

y..,.

is a

stud

y th

at b

asic

ally

goe

s out

and

trie

s

to u

nder

stan

d th

e di

�ere

nces

bet

wee

n au

dien

ces -

to tr

y to

unc

over

nua

nces

that

mak

e th

em s

epar

ate

from

oth

er o

nes..

.. We

go th

roug

h th

eir m

usic

colle

ct

We

go to

nig

htcl

ubs w

ith th

em....

We

shut

the

door

in th

eir b

edro

oms

and

talk

to th

em a

bout

issu

es th

at th

ey fe

el a

re re

ally

impo

rtan

t to

them

. We

talk

with

abou

t wha

t it's

like

to d

ate

toda

y; w

hat i

t's li

ke d

ealin

g w

ith th

eir p

aren

ts; w

hat t

hing

s st

ress

them

out

the

mos

t; w

hat t

hing

s are

real

ly o

n th

e he

arts

and

than

mus

ic v

ideo

s. D

espi

te sl

ouch

ing

ratin

gs in

the

early

199

0s, M

TV h

as a

lway

s rem

aine

d au

thor

itativ

e in

pop

cul

ture

pro

duct

ion,

in n

o sm

all p

art b

ecau

se o

f its

relen

tless

searc

h for e

mergent c

ultural fo

rms fo

rincorporatio

n into its productions This

cont

ract

out

their

serv

ices.

If a c

lient

wan

ts to

'cre

ate a

whole new brand or... p

roduct with a company that targets a

pro

ject

des

igner

s, in

hel

ping

them

mar

ket t

he new product, e

ven in naming the product, and then eventually test

Th

ey use

our

dat

abas

e to

recr

uit k

ids t

o test

the products out, stu� like that. But such apparatuses of industri

cultu

ral p

rodu

ctio

n, so

cial r

esea

rch, a

re al

so fu

rther enclosed as competitive investments.This ability to cr

cr

eate

its o

wn

prop

rieta

ry re

sear

ch, e

mployed to

realize stronger or more authoritative monopoly re

has

bee

n cr

itica

l to

main

taining MTV's cultural authority. Todd Cunningham, MTVs Senior

it be shifts in the ratings, shifts in, kind of viewership beh

behavior and patterns, to the more qualitative kin

o

f touchy-feely things of attitudinal changes an

things like that. As Cunningham explains,

MTV uses forms of more traditio

nal

research, such as ratings, and doing

more than 200 focus groups

per year. However fo

r MTV

research e�orts it is

spec

i�c a

udien

ce,' e

xpla

in D

. Gor

don

and

S. Le

e, Lo

ok- Lo

ok co-fo

unders, they take out information to assist in inspiring

impo

rtan

t not

to d

o th

em in

trad

ition

al p

lace

s and

geo

grap

hies, frequently doing focus groups on basketball courts

,

Ofte

n th

ough

, MTV

will

send

for in

stance, or store parking lots. Of

We have them show us their favorite clothing out�ts, w

hat they wear to parties, som

e things from their photo album

s and things that which really m

ean something to them

. And then we're allow

ed to com

e back and translate that into programm

ing opportunities or just insights in general about what the audience actually does. It is through these m

ethods of surveillance that MTV is able to adm

inistrate through simultaneously leading and following. It concomitantly 'democratizes' its production process, w

hile implicitly negotiatingthe subm

ission

of audiences to their authority - conforming the structures of feeling of an expanding population to new

sets of rents, propertied authority, but also fantastic and targeted spectacles so that 'none may escape'. And w

hile this strategy involves targeting particular aggregate groups, audiences, often it entails using speci�c mem

bers of those groups as intermediaries, key types of consum

ers - recruited wittingly or unw

ittingly as double agents for capital. As Michael J. Wolf, MTV's current president and chief operating o�cer' recently com

mented:

Advertisers would rather connect with that one alpha consumer [young trendsetter] vs. three beta consum

ers ... We understand that audience, and w

e can help them do that. Trendsetting, 'Alpha', consum

ers themselves are increasingly interpolated into the m

eans of capital circulation.

Such techniques have been deeply successful for the network and have set standards for media brand strategies. In a 2002 speech, Sum

ner Redstone elaborates, MTV is hotter than ever as the #1

rates at $135,000t o $150,000 for a 30-seconds pot.19 In 1999, MTV w

as ranked number six am

ong basic cable channels, worth roughly U

S$400 million in sales.The M

TV Netw

orks total annual

(2006) sales are estimated at US$1.3 billion, employing 1100 people. And, now

more than ever M

TV and its international network brands (see Plate 4) serve a critical role in the inter

international division of labor as a hub for a variety of other corporate interests. For instance, MTV's international reach now

allows H

ollywood studios and record lab

to coordinate product releases simultaneously around the w

orld. It is an international class strategy and imperialistic project in the plainest

terms. This is a project within which the structure and control of social environments is central. 360 0 of M

TV As MTV

2001/2002 Media Kit suggests cavalierly: 'Advertising is an image business, m

y friend - you

got to be seen in all the right circles

network with the 12- 24 set for 10 straight years, fueled by the breakaway hit 'The O

sbournes,' as well as long-tim

e favorites Real World and Total Request Live. O

sbournes, in fact, is achieving broadcast-l

MTV The network's diversi�cation into three prongs - MTV (cable), M

TV.com (internet) and M

TV2 (digital cable, but available to antennae in some locales) - is consciously designed to increase the im

pact of advertisi

As the Media Kit explains: The next generation media experience? You're lookin' at it. Each MTV platform

has distinct strengths. MTV 3600 exploits the best of each, then integrates them

to maxim

ize the impact

but further to distil such emotions, or in Raymond Williams' terms, structures of feeling into persuasive m

oods or emotive currency to better inspire its cultural authority.Viacom

purchased the MTV N

etworks in

September of 1985; it also acquired from Warner Communications the second half interest in Showtim

e. Viacom's acquisition of the M

TV Networks represented a synergy w

ithin a synergy,as the umbrella com

p

a lready included several channels: MTV, Nickelodeon and VH-1. However, M

TV itself was the m

ost important property in the M

TV Netw

orks. The network's ability to captivate young au

of a

ny p

rogr

amm

ing

even

t. O

ne e

vent

+ th

ree

scre

ens

= li

mitl

ess

poss

ibili

ties.

Whe

reve

r the

y go

, the

re y

ou [a

dver

tiser

s] a

re'. T

he id

ea o

f a 3

600

stra

tegy

orig

inat

es in

mili

tary

Info

rmat

ion

Opera

tions

, ref

errin

g to co

mpas

s-hea

dings o

r 'azim

uths'

rela

ted

to m

appin

g, nav

igati

on a

nd ta

rget

ing.It

also re

fers to

'full-s

pectrum

' intellig

ence and surveilla

nce; knowing all of th

e conditions of a given battle

or 'operatio

n'. 3

600

also

oft

en refers to a fu

ll-im

mer

sion

virtu

al e

nviro

nm

ttle simulatio

ns are curre

ntly th

e cutti

ng edge

of t

rain

ing

grou

nd su

ppor

t for

air

strik

es (a

nd th

e dr

eam

of t

he e

lect

roni

c ga

min

g in

dust

ry).

The

ter

The

term

rece

ntly

als

o re

fers

to g

over

nmen

t and

cor

pora

te p

erso

nnel

eva

luat

ions

, whe

re e

mpl

oyee

s are

eva

luat

ed th

roug

h ag

greg

ated

'ful

l-spe

ctru

m' s

urve

ys o

f all

co-w

orke

rs ra

ther

than

onl

y im

med

iate

supe

riors

. In m

any

way

s, al

l suc

h co

nnot

atio

ns o

f the

term

appl

y to

MTV

. 360

0 all

udes

as m

uch

to 'f

ull s

pect

rum

' tar

getin

g an

d em

ersio

n as

it d

oes f

eedb

ack a

nd ev

aluat

ion

mec

hani

sms.

Viac

om B

rand

Solu

tions

, form

ed in

the

sam

e ye

ar a

s the

360

0 in

itiat

ive,

200

1, is

an

inst

itutio

nal m

echa

nism

(in

Euro

pe a

nd th

e U

S) fo

r util

izin

g th

eir n

ew m

ulti-

plat

form

targ

etin

g st

rate

gies

to 'e

nsur

e cl

ient

s ac

hiev

e st

rong

retu

rn[s

] on

inve

st

thro

ugh

all f

orm

s of m

arke

ting

com

mun

icat

ion'

. An

impo

rtan

t par

t of t

heir

succ

ess,

they

exp

lain

, is

thei

r abi

lity

to 'u

nder

stan

d an

d in

terp

ret t

he b

ehav

ior o

f our

vie

wer

s, in

rela

tion

to T

V an

d lif

e in

gen

eral

' (via

com

bran

dsol

utio

n.co

.uk;

mtv

-med

ia.co

m).

But,

MTV

's 36

00 st

rate

gy al

so re

spon

ds to

com

petit

ive

deve

lopm

ents

in e

very

day l

ife, n

amel

y the

Inte

rnet

, cyb

er-c

omm

uniti

es an

d oth

er 'c

yber

-pra

ctice

s' Lik

e in

the

wor

kpla

ce,th

e ad

ded

mac

hine

ry a

ttac

hed

to le

isur

e pr

actic

es in

crea

se th

e am

ount

of i

nter

conn

ecte

d ta

sks

poss

ible

at o

ne ti

me;

they

incr

ease

the

rela

tive

'pro

duct

ivity

' of l

eisu

re. A

s Van

To�

er, M

TV/M

TV2/

MTV

Fil

Pres

iden

t exp

lain

s, w

e've

foun

d th

at th

is a

udie

nce

mul

ti-ta

sks

like

no o

ther

. It's

not

unu

sual

for t

hem

to b

e ta

lkin

g on

the

phon

e w

hile

they

're w

atch

ing

TV a

nd u

sing

thei

r com

pute

r to

dow

nloa

d m

usic

or IM

thei

r frie

nds.

MTV

360

resp

onds

to o

ur v

iew

ers b

y giv

ing

them

the c

hoice

s the

y wan

t.The

acce

lera

tion

and

com

pres

sion

of so

cial a

ctiv

ity (m

easu

red

in ti

me)

in th

e so-c

alled

'Net

work S

ocie

ty' is

bot

h a p

robl

em an

d op

portu

nity

for t

elev

ision

stat

ions

like

MTV

. Whi

le th

ere

are

mor

e po

ssib

le d

istr

actio

ns fr

om th

e ad

vert

isin

g m

essa

ges

rent

ed o

n th

at a

ggre

gate

d so

cial

tim

e, th

ere

are

also

rela

tivel

y m

ore

spac

es to

eng

age

soci

atte

ntio

n by

adv

ertis

ers,

ther

e ar

e m

ore

plat

form

s fo

r ind

ustr

ial c

ultu

ral p

rodu

ctio

n. In

tera

ctiv

e pr

ogra

mm

ing

even

ts c

apita

lize

on th

is s

ituat

ion.

The

GM

of M

TV, D

avid

Coh

n, e

xpla

ins '

It's a

ll abo

ut ca

stin

g a w

ider

net

. Con

trol F

reak

has

bee

n a

grat

ifyin

g su

cces

s, in

term

s of i

nter

activ

e TV.

The

show

get

s an

aver

age

of 2

50,0

00 W

eb si

te vi

sitor

s an

hour

.MTV

360 i

s not

the c

orpor

atio

n's �

rst fo

ray i

nto

'inte

ract

ive' p

rogr

amm

ing.

In 1

995,

MTV

(US)

pro

duce

d a

show

cal

led

Yack

Liv

e, w

hich

incl

uded

scro

lling

live

com

men

ts fr

om a

udie

nce

emai

ls a

s vi

deos

pla

yed.

In 1

997,

the

(US)

net

wor

k 're

inve

nted

'itse

lf af

ter s

ever

al y

ears

of d

eclin

ing

ratin

gs w

ith th

e un

veili

ng o

f a h

uge

stud

io in

the

mid

dle

of N

ew Y

ork

City

's re

cent

ly re

nova

ted

Tim

es S

quar

e. T

he s

tudi

o w

as d

esig

ned

and

stru

ctur

ed fo

r int

erac

tivity

of a

ll so

rts:

huge

win

dow

s tha

t allo

wed

ped

estri

ans t

o lo

ok in

and

perh

aps g

et ca

ught

on

cam

era,

�bro

tic in

frast

ruct

ure a

llow

ing

�exi

ble

inte

rfacin

g w

ith a

udie

nces

acr

oss a

varie

ty o

f com

mun

icatio

ns p

latfo

rms,

and �

exib

le o

utdoo

r and

indo

or ca

mer

a arc

hite

ctur

e al

low

ing

out-

of-t

he-s

tudi

o �l

min

g. T

hese

inno

vatio

ns o

n th

e la

ndsc

ape

allo

wed

for n

ew p

rogr

amm

ing

oppo

rtun

ities

, lik

e th

e 19

99 in

tera

ctiv

e ga

me

show

, Web

Rio

t. Li

kew

ise,

this

land

scap

e ak

so a

llo

for M

TV's

�ags

hip

vide

o co

untd

own

show

, Tot

al R

eque

st L

ive,

ver

sion

s of

whi

ch e

xist

(in

sim

ilar s

tudi

o la

ndsc

apes

)

from

War

saw

to M

umba

i. In

July

200

4, M

TV Eu

rope

bui

lt a s

imila

r gla

ssy s

tudi

o on

Lond

on's

Leic

este

r Squ

are

as th

e st

age

for i

ts 'E

urop

ean'

versi

on o

f TRL

. Util

izing

the W

eb (a

nd it

s optic

al in

frast

ruct

ure)

and

inte

grat

ing

new

form

s of c

omm

unic

atio

ns in

to th

eir m

onop

oly

pow

er b

ecam

e th

e ne

w w

rinkl

e in

MTV

's ta

rget

ing

stra

tegi

es. T

hese

infr

astr

uctu

res

also

ena

ble

a fe

edba

ck lo

op fo

r wha

t MTV

/MTV

2/ M

TV F

il

pres

iden

t at t

he ti

me

Van

To�

er d

escr

ibes

as

the

netw

ork'

s ta

rget

aud

ienc

e's

insa

tiabl

e hu

nger

for '

'ac

cess

and

beh

ind-

the-

scen

es in

form

atio

n'. Ex

perie

ncin

g th

e co

ntra

-dic

tions

of t

heir

wid

espr

ead

alie

natio

n fro

m p

opul

ar cu

ltura

l pro

duct

ion,

'[aud

ience

s] w

ant a

muc

h m

ore i

ndiv

idua

lized

exp

erie

nce

and

mor

e in

tera

ctio

n w

ith e

ach

othe

r and

with

the

artis

ts', e

xpla

ins

MTV

Inte

rnat

iona

l Gro

up c

hairm

an N

icho

las B

utte

rwor

th in

200

1. H

e co

ntin

ues

that

the

corp

orat

ion

plan

s to

mak

e 'c

onve

rgen

ce th

grea

t rei

nven

tion

of M

TV. W

ith M

TV 3

60, a

ll th

ree

plat

form

s ar

e di

�ere

nt b

ut c

onne

cted

',

e

mpl

oyin

g 'a

deep

er in

tegr

atio

n of

com

mun

ities

, with

the

abilit

y for

use

rs to

see

each

oth

er a

nd ta

lk to

eac

h ot

her w

here

ver t

hey a

re'. M

TV 36

0 enca

psulat

es a

relat

ive ex

pans

ion

with

in th

e in

dust

rial p

rodu

ctio

n of

cul

ture

, inc

orpo

ratin

g ne

wly

ele

ctri�

ed a

spec

ts o

f eve

ryda

y lif

e, b

rand

ing

them

, and

exe

rtin

g pr

oprie

tary

aut

horit

y ov

er th

em.'W

e w

ante

d M

TV 3

60 to

be

mor

e th

an c

ross

-pro

mot

iona

l

, exp

lain

s Ju

dy M

cGra

th, t

hen-

pres

iden

t of t

he M

TV G

roup

and

cha

irman

of I

nter

activ

e

M

usic

(now

pre

siden

t of M

TV N

etw

orks

), 'W

e wan

ted

it to

conn

ect t

he M

TV v

iew

ers'.

And

thro

ugh

2005

this

stra

tegy

was

wild

ly su

cces

sful. A

s bro

adban

d m

edia,

por

tabl

e di

gita

l tec

hnol

ogy,

and

onlin

e co

mm

unity

pro

lifer

atio

n ac

cele

rate

d in

the

US

thro

ugho

ut e

arly

200

6, M

TVbe

gan

to p

ush

its m

ulti-

plat

form

pro

gram

min

g in

to h

igh

gear

, with

the

2006

Vid

eo M

usic

Aw

ards

as a

test

cas

e. T

he

The

VMA

s ha

d be

en e

xper

ienc

ing

cons

tant

slip

page

in th

eir r

atin

gs.P

resi

dent

of

of M

TV, C

hrist

ina N

orm

an, e

xplai

ns: O

ur au

dien

ce e

xper

ienc

es e

nter

tain

men

t on

mul

tiple

pla

tform

s so

we

are m

akin

g th

e 200

6 VM

As a m

ultis

cree

n, in

tera

ctive

expe

rienc

e th

at w

ill g

ive

them

mor

e ac

cess

to th

e VM

As o

n m

ore

plat

form

s th

an e

ver b

efor

e, w

ith a

live

alte

rnat

e fe

ed o

f the

big

sho

w a

vaila

ble

on M

TV O

ver d

rive,

giv

ing

fans

a �

rst e

ver l

ive

behi

nd th

e sc

enes

vie

w o

f the

VM

As

Sean

Mor

an, E

VP, M

TV 3

60 B

rand

Sal

es c

omm

ents

: We

are

Fort

unat

e

t

o ha

ve a

line

up o

f spo

nsor

par

tner

s tha

t und

erst

and

mul

tipla

tform

pro

gram

min

g an

d kn

ow h

ow to

reac

h ou

r aud

ienc

e in

new cr

eativ

e way

s on

air, o

nlin

e, on

the g

roun

d an

d on

thei

r mob

ile p

hone

s.... W

e ar

e w

orki

ng c

lose

ly w

ith a

ll of

our

spon

sors

to c

reat

e a

seam

less

ent

erta

inm

ent e

xper

ienc

e th

at w

ill fu

rthe

r sol

idify

our

lead

ersh

ip p

ositi

on in

this

rapi

dly

evol

ving

spa

ce.

This

fran

tic p

ush

into

dig

ital p

latf

orm

s beg

an w

ith V

iaco

m b

eing

out

bid

by R

uper

t Mur

doch

in 20

05 to

pur

chas

e th

e pr

ofou

ndly

pop

ular

(54

mill

ion

regi

ster

ed u

sers

) onl

ine c

omm

unity

'Mys

pace'.

Since

then

, as B

usin

ess W

eek r

elat

es, 'M

cGra

th h

as d

ecla

red

"a d

igita

l Mar

shal

l Pla

n"...

The

troo

ps m

ust n

ow d

eliv

er se

rvic

es a

cros

s new

bro

adba

nd c

hann

els,

over

cel

l pho

nes,

and

via

vide

o ga

mes

'. As

McG

rath

pitc

hed

in Ja

nuar

y 20

06, n

obob

ody

wan

ts to

be

who

they

use

d to

be,

incl

udin

g us

. Med

ia id

entit

like

mar

ket s

hare

, are

up

for g

rabs

... If

we

wer

e la

unch

ing

toda

y, th

e �r

st so

ng I'd

tee u

p w

ould

be t

he [1

980s

ban

d] Plim

soul

s' 'Ev

eryw

here

at O

nce'.

(Low

ry 2

006,

50)

This

is a

notio

n ec

hoed

by

Ange

l Gam

bino

, MTV

Net

wor

ks U

K's V

P of

com

mer

cial

stra

tegy

and

dig

ital m

edia

:'MTV

has

real

ized

that

it n

eeds

to m

ove

beyo

nd T

V to

eng

age

view

ers

via

the

full

rang

e

of e

mer

ging

dig

ital d

evic

es' (

Jone

s 20

06, 2

1). W

hile

it

be th

e cas

e tha

t 'Th

e M

TV b

rand

, con

tent

and

pro

gram

min

g ha

ve a

lway

s bee

n pe

rfect

ly su

ited

to d

igita

l plat

form

s,' as

Gam

bino

rem

arks

, 'net

wor

k cap

acity

and

the

devi

ce ca

pabi

lity

have

n't b

een

ther

e un

til n

ow' (

Jone

s 20

06, 2

1). A

nd, t

houg

h G

ambi

no c

ontin

ues o

n th

at th

is p

roje

ct g

oes

way

beyo

nd u

ser g

ener

ated

con

tent

... it

's ab

out g

ivin

g au

d

our p

rogr

amm

ing.

.. gi

ving

them

the

chan

ce to

with

the k

ind

of id

eas t

hat w

e w

ould

nev

er th

ink

of (J

ones

200

6, 2

1) it

is cl

ear t

hat t

he sp

eci�

c con

tent

of t

heir p

rogra

mm

ing

has t

aken

- in

no sm

all w

ay -

a ba

ckse

at to

the

impe

rial d

ispos

sess

ion

of th

e m

eans

of p

rodu

cing

and

eng

agin

g po

pula

r cul

ture

.Hea

d of

inte

ract

ive

oper

atio

ns a

t MTV

Net

wor

ks U

K &

Irela

nd, M

atth

ew

Our

bus

ines

s isn

't ab

out w

orsh

ippi

ng a

t the

alta

r of T

V an

ymor

e... W

e hav

e to

focu

s on

bein

g w

here

the

audi

ence

nee

ds u

s to

be, w

heth

er th

at's

on a

two-in

ch sc

reen

or a

42-in

ch h

igh-

de�n

ition

one

. Wha

t is i

ncre

asin

gly

impo

rtan

t is c

aptu

ring

the

spat

ial r

elat

ions

impl

icit

in c

onte

mpo

rary

stru

ctur

es o

f fee

ling:

look

ing

in a

t tha

t whi

ch is

so w

idel

y m

eani

ng

and

yet e

nclo

sed

and

elite

. 'Th

ere

are

very

stro

ng em

otio

nal b

ene�

ts fr

om h

avin

g a

rem

ote

cont

rol in

your

han

d,' e

xpla

ins K

erhs

aw, 't

hat y

ou ca

n us

e to

get cl

oser

to th

e pro

gram

you'

re w

atch

ing'.

With

this

know

ledg

e M

TV a

nd o

ther

bra

nds

in th

e M

TV N

etw

orks

hav

e be

gun

to fo

rm s

trat

egic

alli

ance

s an

d pa

rtne

rshi

ps w

ith c

omm

unic

atio

ns

like

AT&

T In

c an

d Ve

rizon

to m

onop

not j

ust t

heir

audi

ence

s' im

agin

atio

ns, b

ut th

e m

eans

- th

e 36

00 g

eogr

aphi

es -

of im

agin

ing.

Cur

rent

ly, M

TV is

able

to re

ach

nearly

750

milli

on ce

llula

r pho

ne u

sers

thro

ugh

its 5

7 w

irele

ss d

eals

wor

ldw

ide.

Som

e su

ch d

eals

, lik

e th

at w

ith A

mp'

d M

obile

, allo

w th

e vi

ewin

g of

pro

gram

from

all

the

MTV

Net

wor

ks' c

hann

els.

Alo

ngth

e sa

lines

, the

MTV

Net

wor

ks ac

quire

d, in

May

of 2

006,

x�r

e, In

c., 't

he fa

stes

t-gro

win

g on

line g

amin

g co

mm

unica

tion

and co

mm

unity

plat

form

in th

e wor

ld' fo

r US$

102

mill

ion

(Via

com

200

6b).

Furt

her,

the

MTV

Net

wor

ks a

nd G

oogl

e In

c. b

egan

a c

olla

bora

tion

in th

e su

mm

er o

f 200

6 in

nova

ting

a vi

deo

dist

ribut

ion

mod

el 't

hat w

ill

serv

e con

sum

ers,

web

pub

lishe

rs an

d ad

verti

sers

'. Jud

y McG

rath

rem

arks

of t

he co

llabo

ratio

n, 'O

ur b

rand

s are

gre

at n

avig

atio

n tool

s for

our

audi

ence

s, an

d th

is de

al w

ith G

oogl

e w

ill e

nabl

e us

to fo

llow

and

lead

them

to n

ew p

lace

s'.In

this

rega

rd, t

he c

apita

l int

ensi

ve tr

ansf

orm

atio

n of

the

terr

of e

very

day

life

- inc

ludi

ng

inclu

ding

the b

ody -

is m

ade

into

not

sim

ply a

n ad

disp

lay b

ut a

mul

ti-di

rect

iona

l fee

dbac

k mec

hani

sm w

hereb

y tar

getin

g an

d tra

nsfo

rmin

g, le

adin

g an

d fo

llow

ing,

pro

duct

ion

and

rece

ptio

n ar

e co

ales

ced

with

in th

e pr

oprie

tary

and

ple

asur

able

forc

e of

alie

natio

n.W

hat t

his

adva

ncin

g

tech

nolo

gica

l str

uggl

e

ove

r main

tain

ing

rent

able

audi

ence

s rep

rese

nts,

how

ever

, is a

lso th

e ev

er-a

dvan

cing

blur

ring

of ad

verti

sing

and co

nsum

er ta

rget

ing

with

the p

ract

ice o

f eve

ry-d

ay li

fe. In

200

6, M

TV fo

rmed

a n

ew fe

edba

ck/ t

arge

ting

proj

ect c

alle

d, 'V

iew

ser L

abs'.

The

labs

, a p

artn

ersh

ip b

etw

een

the

netw

ork,

its a

dver

ti

spo

nsor

s, an

d ot

her m

edia

agen

cies,

are

inte

nded

to p

ione

er m

ore

targ

etin

g in

nova

tions

(Eld

ridge

2006

). As S

ean

Mor

an, M

TV's

Seni

or Vi

ce P

resid

ent o

f Ad

Sale

s, ex

claim

s, Vi

ewse

r Lab

s rep

rese

nts t

he k

ind

of re

volu

tiona

ry c

olla

bora

tion

that

onl

y M

TV c

an b

ring

to th

e ad

vert

isin

g

com

mun

ity...

Tog

e

with

inno

vativ

e cl

ient

s and

age

ncie

s, w

e ar

e goi

ng to

�nd

the b

est w

ay to

evol

ve th

e adve

rtisin

g m

odel

and

enha

nce

the

view

ing

expe

rienc

e fo

r our

aud

ienc

e. T

he L

abs,

how

ever

, are

str

ateg

izin

g w

ell b

eyon

d w

hat w

e m

ay s

impl

y th

ink

of a

s

'enh

ance

d vi

ew

ex

perie

nce'.

Inde

ed, a

ccor

ding

to V

iaco

m, t

he Vi

ewse

r Lab

s will:

reth

ink e

very

min

ute o

f vie

wer

s'. .. E

xper

ienc

es a

cros

s MTV

's m

ultip

le sc

reen

s, fro

m p

ods

to p

rogr

amm

ing

to p

rom

o sp

ots t

o pr

oduc

t int

egra

tion

to c

omm

erci

al

time

and

mor

Th

e pu

rpos

e of

Vie

wse

r Lab

s is t

o cr

eate

an

open

-end

ed d

ialog

ue b

etwee

n th

e net

wor

kand

mul

tiple

spo

nsor

par

tner

s tha

t will

take

the i

ndus

try b

eyon

d the 3

0-se

cond

spot

and

the

bann

er a

d, o

peni

ng u

p ne

w w

indo

ws a

nd o

ppor

tuni

ties

for a

ll pa

rtie

s.Whi

le, M

TV's

View

ser L

abs w

ill b

e w

hat V

iaco

m c

all

'a u

niqu

e co

c

olla

bora

tion',

it si

gni�

es so

met

hing

mor

e ge

nera

l,the

bro

ader

geo

grap

hic c

lass s

trate

gies

enga

ged

betw

een

clien

ts, a

dver

tis

ag

encie

s and

num

erou

s int

erna

l[net

work]

dep

artm

ents

inclu

ding

ad sa

les,i

nteg

rate

d m

arke

ting,

on

–air

prom

os, p

rogr

amm

ing,

con

sum

er m

arke

ting,

rese

arch

and

mor

e.Ca

ble

tele

visi

on

mad

e M

TV

bot

h po

ssib

le a

nd n

eces

sary

. Tho

ugh

it ha

d be

en in

use

del

iver

ing

netw

ork b

road

casts

to re

mot

e par

ts o

f the

US,

via

surp

lus m

ilita

ry co

axia

l cab

le si

nce

the

ear

ly 19

50s,

cabl

e em

erge

d as

a ke

y US g

row

th in

dust

ry in

tern

atio

nally

in th

e m

id-1

970s

and

ear

ly 1

980s

. On

the

�rst

Tue

sday

of M

arch

198

1, a

fter

mu

plan

ni

o

n ho

w to

pen

etra

te th

e ex

pand

ing

basic

cabl

e m

arke

t, th

e War

ner-A

mex

Sat

ellit

e En

terta

inm

ent C

ompa

ny la

unch

ed M

TV, a

24-

hour

'vid

eo m

usic

netw

ork',

that

wou

ld ra

diat

eits

�rs

t pro

gram

min

g

p

rogr

amm

ing

roug

hly �

ve m

onth

s lat

er, o

n 1

Augu

st. T

houg

h w

ithou

t muc

h fa

nfar

e an

d on

dub

ious

�na

ncia

l foo

ting,

the

impo

rtan

ce o

f MT

beca

appa

rent

early

on.

But

this

impo

rtanc

e w

as n

o ac

cide

nt. M

TV's

pop

cultu

ral p

row

ess w

as th

e pro

duct o

f int

ense

rese

arch

and

the

culm

inat

ion

of n

ew te

chni

ques

and

tech

nolo

gies

. Whi

le b

road

cast

tele

visi

on h

ad d

evel

oped

aro

und

a pa

radi

gm o

f rep

lica

succ

show

form

ulas

and

striv

ing

for b

road

pop

ular

ity, t

he p

rolif

erat

ion

of ca

ble

infra

stru

ctur

e dev

elop

ed co

ncom

itant

ly w

ith n

ew p

rogr

am

min

g st

rate

gies

of t

arge

ting

key

(thos

e w

ith h

igh

spen

ding

pow

er) a

udie

nces

, kno

wn

as 'q

ualit

y de

mog

raph

ics'.

Thu

s,

aud

rese

arch

was

no

long

er (o

nly)

a w

ay o

f mea

surin

g po

pula

rity a

fter t

he fa

ct, b

ut ra

ther

a w

ay o

f pro

ducin

g pop

ular

ity th

roug

h th

e con

struc

tion

of a

targ

et a

udie

nce“

. Whe

n Bo

b Pi

ttm

an b

egan

con

duct

ing

rese

arch

for t

he v

iabi

lity

of a

stat

ion

that

com

bine

his g

ener

atio

n's t

wo fa

vorit

e pa

stim

es -

wat

chin

g TV

and

liste

ning

to th

e ra

dio

- it w

as al

read

y in

the c

onte

xt o

f the

exist

ing

know

ledge

that

'you

ng

, u

rban

adu

lts (e

spec

ially

fem

ales

) age

d 18

-49

wer

e th

e pr

ime

cons

umer

s of

the

type

s of g

oods

adv

ertis

ed

repr

esen

tativ

es o

f the

targ

et d

emog

raph

ic. Th

eir s

urve

ys p

rovid

ed ev

iden

ce th

at 85

per

c

ent o

f tho

se

p

olle

d ex

pres

sed

exci

tem

ent o

ver '

a ca

ble

chan

nel t

hat m

erge

d te

levi

sion

and

rock

and

roll',

whi

ch w

as

whi

ch w

as u

sed

to e

licit

the

coop

erat

ion

of th

e re

cord

com

pani

es, a

dver

tiser

s and ca

b

le o

pera

tors

nee

d

ed

to la

unch

the

proj

ect.

But i

t was

, per

haps

eve

n m

ore

impo

rtan

tly, P

ittm

an's

part

icip

ant-

obse

rv

pr

actic

es, r

elat

ing

the

qual

itativ

e ex

perie

nce

of h

is ow

n 'p

sych

ogra

phic'

grou

p, h

is

s

tatu

s as a

cultu

ral d

oubl

e

age

nt, m

etab

oliz

ing

the

deta

ils o

f his

live

d ex

perie

nces

that

wer

e ce

ntra

l to

its su

cces

s.In

Oct

of 1

982,

A.C

. Nie

lsen

rele

ased

a

su

rvey

of M

TV v

iew

ers,

indi

catin

g 85

per

cent

of t

he 2

,000

resp

onde

nts i

n th

e in

tend

ed

g

roup

wat

ched

MTV

, and

thos

e th

at d

id v

iew

ed it

an

aver

age

of 4

.6 h

ours

a w

eek.

F

urth

erm

ore,

MTV

's su

cces

s as

a p

latf

orm

to s

ell w

as im

med

iate

ly a

ppar

ent a

s

as

'63

perc

ent o

f the

surv

ey re

spon

dent

s sa

id th

ey p

urch

ased

an

art

ist's

albu

m a

fter v

iew

ing

a cl

ip fe

atur

ingt

he a

rtis

t's m

usic

Thi

s suc

cess

invo

lved

bot

h ex

pand

ing

venu

es fo

r eng

t

he 1

980s

' pop

cul

ture

exp

losi

on a

nd th

e ex

cite

m

it e

ntai

led,

and

inte

nsify

ing

a st

rate

gic,

if u

n

co

nver

genc

e of

the

mea

ns o

f cul

tura

l ex

A

s the

mus

ic in

dust

ry b

ecam

e in

crea

inse

para

ble

from

mus

ic v

ideo

s an

M

TV's

livin

g ro

om m

arke

ting

p

latfo

rm, s

o to

o di

d H

olly

w

In th

e ea

rly 1

980s

, mov

ie

so

undt

rack

s be

cam

e cr

com

pone

nts

of �

lm

m

arke

ting,

e ne

x m

ark

MTV

Thus, Rolling Stone Magazine described Pittm

an's penchant for market research and a willingness to discard

traditional 'wisdom

' in favor of pursuing the 'real meaning' of the data compiled by phone calls, sales-trend analy

and surveys of the Mood of the N

ation. MTV began as an elaborate simultaneous targeting and production of both an a

audience and forms of already-popular m

edia culture. WASEC's audience research team, led by Marshall Cohen, discovered th

that no channel was speci�cally targeting Am

erica's

most a�

uent demographic group, post-w

ar 'baby-boomers' aged 12-34

and began testing the MTV concept at length w

ith

revolving around the marriage of popular music artists/ teen idols with the visual drama of �lm clips and mini-movie trailers. As Gordon W

eaver of P

aram

ount

Pic

ture

s ex

plai

ns:T

hat's

bec

ause

the

orig

inal

intent of these music videos is to promote the movie, although there's spillover bene�t to the record when the m

ovie is play

ed...

[Par

amou

nt P

ictu

res

dist

ribut

es th

e cl

ips

to M

TVan

and other television outlets, as well as locally to clubs.] We do this through our o�ces in New York and our 43 advertising agencies a

round th

e co

untr

y...I

t's a

god

send

. The

dem

ogra

phic

s ar

e

are so perfect with music video. Paramount's saucy pop classic, Flashdance (1983), broke �rst ground in this sort of p

roduction and dist

ributio

n st

rate

gy. A

fter

Par

amou

nt s

pent

clo

se to

US

$3

million promoting Flashdance, Weaver explained: We incorporated the music into all of our radio and TV spots. If y

ou have a single... [Ire

ne Cara's 'W

hat a

Feel

ing'

] pla

ying

on

the

radi

o, th

e sp

ots

are

like

cross-pollination. This process was perhaps summed up best by Gary LeMel, Columbia Pictures' Colfax division executive, Holly

wood sees a

way

to g

et a

lot o

f [fr

ee] a

dver

tisin

g an

d m

arke

ting

for its target audience. The target audience for MTV is the same target for pictures. You need the 12 to 25 demographic. But, MTV's in

novations i

n video

mus

ic a

lso re

de�n

ed th

e st

ruct

ure

of p

op e

xpre

ss

forms. In the early 1980s, Bob Pittman, co-founder of MTV, comments on the stylistic innovations developed by MTV: What w

e've introduced w

ith M

TV is a

non-

narr

ativ

e fo

rm. A

s op

pose

d to

con

vent

iona

l

television, where you rely on plot and continuity, we rely on mood and emotion. We make you feel a certain way as opposed to

you w

alkin

g aw

ay w

ith a

ny p

artic

ular

kno

wle

dge.

He

cont

with a M

cCluhanian sense of opportunism, You're dealing with a culture of TV babies.., what kids can't do today is follow things too lo

ng. They get bore

d and

distracted, their minds wander. If information is presented to them in tight fragments that don't necessarily follow each other, kids can compre

hend that

. Par

t of M

TVs

innovative dominance has been not simply concocting new forms of surveillance for understanding how to better p

redict it

s targ

et d

emog

raph

ic'sp

refe

renc

es a

nd h

abits

, but

furt

her

audiences through its quick pace and �ashy graphics made it a valuable asset for advertising revenue and its style was becoming popular and highly in�uential in other media. In 1996 the MTV Networks launched MTV-2, w

hich would allow M

TV to

focu

s mor

e on

airi

ng tr

aditi

onal

pro

gram

min

g,

rather than music videos. Despite slouching ratings in the early 1990s, MTV has alw

ays remained authoritative in pop culture production, in no small part because of its relentless search for emergent cultural forms fo

r incorporatio

n in

to its

pro

ductio

ns. T

his f

ee

This feedback process is called 'cool hunting', where researchers visit teens' homes, hangout in their bedrooms and learn what moves them emotionally, aesthetically. Some such researchers, like at Look-Look, contra

ct out th

eir services. I

f a cl

ient w

ants

to '

'create a whole new brand or... product with a company that targets a speci�c audience,' explain D. Gordon and S. Lee, Look- Look co-founders, they take out information information to assist in inspiring project desig

ners, in helping th

em m

arke

t the

new

pro

duct

,

, even in naming the product, and then eventually testing. They use our database to recruit kids to test the products out, stu� like that. But such apparatuses of industrial cultural production, social research, are also furth

er enclosed as

This ability to create its own proprietary research, employed to realize stronger or more authoritative m

onopoly rent, has been critical to maintaining MTV's cultural authority. Todd Cunningham, MTV's Senior VP of Brand Stra

tegy and

Plann ing, explains how the corporation uses such 'instruments' to sim

ultaneously represent and direct popular culture: The research e�orts at MTV are certainly legendary. Ever since the very beginning, there's been a kind of fe

verish ad

dictio

n

and understanding young people.... In virtually every meeting that we have, research kicks th

e meetin

g o�. T

here

's a

signa

l rig

ht th

ere

to th

e or

g

organization that,' Hey, you've got to pay attention to what the view

ers are about and what kinds of things are happening with them,' whether it be shifts in the ratings, shifts in, kind of viewership behavior a

nd pat

tern

s, to

the

mor

e qu

alita

tive

kind

of t

o

touchy-feely things of attitudinal changes and things like that. As Cunningham explains, MTV uses fo

rm

s of m

ore t

raditi

onal

rese

arch

, suc

h as

ratin

gs, a

n

doing more than 200

focus groups per year. However, for MTV's research e�orts, it is important not to do them in traditio

nal places and geo

grap

hies

, fre

quen

tly d

oing

focu

s gro

ups

on

basketball courts, for instance, or store parking lots. Often though, M

TV will send its quasi-social scientists to people's homes

'where [they] get the great chance to actually go out and ri�e through kids' closets and go through

'their music collections'. Once a year, MTV res earchers perform

what they call, 'ethnography'. Cunningham

details: An ethnography study.., .is a study that basically goes out and tries to understand the di�erences between audiences - to try uncover

uncover nuances that make them separate from

other ones.... We go through their music collections. We go to nightclubs

We shut the door in their bedrooms and talk to

them about iss

ues t

hat th

ey fe

el a

re re

ally

impo

rtan

t to

th

We talk with them about what it's like to date today; w

hat it's lik

e dea

ling

with th

eir p

aren

ts; w

hat t

hing

s st

ress

them out the most; what things are really on the hearts and minds of th

em and thei

r pee

rs. W

e ha

ve th

em sh

ow u

s th

eir f

avor

ite

but also fantastic and targeted spectacles s

o that

'non

e m

ay e

scap

e'.An

d w

hile

this

stra

tegy

involves targeting partic

ular aggregate gro

ups, au

dien

ces,

ofte

n it

enta

ils u

sing

spec

i�c

mem

of those groups as intermediaries, k

ey types of c

onsum

ers -

recr

uite

d w

ittin

gly

or u

nwitt

ingl

y as

double agents for capital. As Michael J. Wolf, M

TV's cu

rrent

pre

siden

t and

chi

ef o

pera

ting

o�ce

r' re

ce

commented: Advertisers would rather connect with th

at one a

lpha

consu

mer

[you

ng tr

ends

ette

r] v

s. th

ree

be

consumers ... We understand that audience, and we can help th

em d

o th

at.Tr

ends

ettin

g, 'A

lpha

', con

sum

ers t

hem

me favorites Real World and Total Request Live. O

sbou

rnes

, in fa

ct, i

s ach

ievi

ng b

road

cast

-leve

l rat

e

at $135,000t o $150,000 for a 30-seconds pot.1

9 In

1999

, MTV

was

rank

ed n

umbe

r six

am

ong

basi

c

is an internatio

nal class st

rate

gy an

d impe

rialis

tic p

roje

ct in

the

plai

nest

term

This is a project within w

hich th

e stru

ctur

e an

d co

ntro

l of s

ocia

l env

ironm

ents

is

central. 360 0 of M

TV As MTV's

2001/

2002

Med

ia K

it su

gges

ts c

aval

ierly

adv

ertis

ing

is an image business,

my friend - y

ou've g

ot to

be

seen

in a

ll th

e rig

ht c

ircle

s' Th

e ne

two

diversi�cation into three prongs M

TV (cab

le), M

TV.com

(int

erne

t) a

nd M

TV2

is c

onsc

ious

ly

designed to increase th

e impact of a

dvertisin

g. A

s the

Med

ia K

it ex

plai

ns T

he n

ext g

ener

atio

n

media experience? You're lo

okin' at it. E

ach M

TV p

latfo

rm h

as d

istin

ct st

reng

ths.

MTV

360

0 ex

pl

the best of each, then integrates them to

max

imize

the

impa

ct o

f any

pro

gram

min

g ev

ent.

On

event + three screens = lim

itless possibilit

ies. W

here

ver t

hey

go, t

here

you

[adv

ertis

ers]

are

'. The

idea of a 3600 strategy orig

inates in milit

ary In

form

atio

n Ope

ratio

ns, r

efer

ring

to c

ompa

ss-h

eadi

or 'azimuths' related to mapping, navigatio

n and

targ

etin

g. It

als

o re

fers

to 'f

ull-s

pect

rum

’ inte

lli

intelligence and surveilla

nce; knowing all of t

he con

ditions

of a

giv

en b

attle

or '

oper

atio

n'. 3

600

also often refers to a full-im

mersion virtual e

nviron

men

t 360

0 ba

ttle

sim

ulat

ions

are

cur

rent

ly th

e

rather th

an only immediat

e sup

erio

rs. In

man

y w

ays,

all

such

con

nota

tions

of

evaluation m

echa

nism

s Via

com

Bra

nd S

olut

ions

form

ed in

the

clothing out�ts, what they wear to parties, some things from

their photo albums and things th

which really mean something to them. And then w

e're allowed to come back and translate that into

programming opportunities or just insi ghts in general about what the audience actually does. It is through the

these methods of surveillance that MTV is able to adm

inistrate through simultaneously leading and following. It

concomitantly 'democratizes' its production process, while im

plicitly negotiating the submission of audiences to their au

authority - conforming the structure s of feeling of an expanding population to new sets of rents, propertied authority,

are increasingly interpolated into the means of capital circulation. Such techniques have

have been deeply successful for the network and have set standards for media brand strateg

In a 2002 speech, Sumner Redstone elaborates, MTV is hotter than ever as the #1 network wit

the 12- 24 set for 10 straight years, fueled by the breakaway hit 'The Osbournes,' as well as long-ti

cable channels, worth roughly US$400 million in sales.20 The MTV Networks total annual (20

sales are estimated at US$1.3 bi llion, employing 1100 people. And, now more than ever MTV an

its international network brands (see Plate 4) serve a critical role in the international division of labor

as a hub for a variety of other corporate interests. For instance, MTV's international reach now allows

Hollywood studios and record labels to coordinate product releases simultaneously around the world.

cutting edge of training ground support for air strikes (and

the dream of the electronic gaming industry). The term

rece

also refers to government and corporate personnel evaluatio

aggregated 'full-spectrum' surveys of all co-w

ork

where employees

of the term apply to

MTV. 3600 alludes as mu

to 'full spectrum' targeting and

emersion as it does feedback and

not unusual for them to be talking on the phone while they’re wat ching TV and using their com puter to download music or IM their friends. M TV 3600 respo

are evaluated through

the same year as the 3600 initiative, 2001, is an institutional mechanism (in

Euro

pe and th

e US

) for

util

izin

g th

eir n

ew m

ulti-

plat

form

targeting strategies to 'ensure clients achieve strong return[s] on investment thro

ugh

c

omm

unicatio

n'. A

n im

porta

nt p

art o

f the

ir su

cces

s, th

ey e

x

i

n relat

ion to

TV a

nd li

fe in

gen

eral

' But

, MTV

's 36

00 s

trat

egy

m

ely th

e Inte

rnet

, cyb

er-c

omm

uniti

es a

nd o

ther

cyb

er-p

ract

ice

sure p

ract

ices i

ncre

ase

the

amou

nt o

f int

erco

nnec

ted

task

s pos

, w

e've f

ound th

at th

is au

dien

ce m

ulti-

task

s lik

e no

oth

er. I

t’s

to

our v

iew

ers

by g

ivin

g th

em th

e ch

oice

s th

e

is their ability to 'understand and interpret the behavior of our view

also responds to competitive developments in everyday life, na

Like in the workplace, the added m

achinery attached to lei

at one time; they increase the relative productivity of leis

As Van To�er, MTV/M

TV2/MTV Film s President explains

The acceleration and compression of social activ ity (mea

sure

d in

tim

e) in

the

so-c

alle

d 'N

etw

ork

Society' is both a problem and op

port

unity

for t

elev

isio

n st

atio

ns li

ke M

TV.

While there more possible distractio n s from

the

adve

rtis

ing

mes

sage

s re

nted

on

that

aggregated social time, the r e are

also

rela

tivel

y m

ore

spac

es to

eng

age

soc

attention by advertise rs, the

re a

re m

ore

plat

form

s fo

r ind

ustr

ial c

ultu

production. Interactive pr o gram

min

g ev

ents

cap

italiz

e on

this

situ

atio

n.

GM of MTV, David C

ohn, e

xpla

ins

'It's

all a

bout

cas

ting

a w

ider

Control Freak has been a gratif

ying

succ

ess,

in te

rms o

f int

erac

tive

TV.

show gets an average of 25 0,000

Web

site

vis

itors

an

hour

. MTV

360

is

the corporation's �rst for ay into

inte

ract

ive

prog

ram

min

g In

199

5,

produced a show call e d Yack L

ive,

whi

ch in

clud

ed sc

rolli

ng li

ve

from audience em ails a

s vid

eos

play

ed. I

n 19

97, t

he n

etw

'reinvented' itself after s

ever

al y

ears

of d

eclin

ing

ratin

with the unveil i ng of a

hug

e st

udio

in th

e m

iddl

e

New York Cit ys rece

ntly

reno

vate

d Ti

mes

Squ

a

Th

e st

udio

was

des

igne

d an

d st

r

for i

nter

activ

ity o

f all

sort

s hug

e w

win

dows t

hat a

llow

ed p

edes

tria

ns

to lo

ok in

and

per

haps

get

cau

ght

on ca

mer

a, �

brot

ic in

frast

ruct

ure

allowing �exible interfacing w

ith audiences across a variety of comm

unications platforms, and �exible outdoor and indoor cam

era architecture allowing out-of-the-studio �lm

ing. These innovations on the landscape allowed for new

programm

ing opportunities, like the 1999 interactive game show

, Web Riot. Likew

ise, this landscape also allows for M

TV's �agship video countdown show

, Total Request Live, versions of which exist(in sim

ilar studio landscapes) from W

arsaw to M

umbai. In July 2004, M

TV Europe built a similar glassy studio on London's Leicester Square as the stage for its 'European' version of TRL. U

tilizing the Web (and its optical infrastructure) and integrating new

forms of com

munications

Brand Sales comm

ents: We are fortunate to have a line up of sponsor partners that understand m

ultiplatform program

ming and know

how to reach our audience in new

creative ways on air, online, on the ground and on their m

obile phones.... We are w

orking closely with all of our sponsors to create a seam

less entertainment experience that w

ill further solidify our leadership position in this rapidly evolving space. This frantic push into digital platforms began w

ith Viacom being outbid by Rupert M

urdoch in 2005 to purchase the profoundly popular (54 million registered users) online com

munity 'M

yspace'. Since then, as Business Week relates, 'M

cGrath has declared "a digital Marshall Plan"... The troops

must now

deliver services across new broadband channels, over cell phones, and via video gam

es'. As McG

rath pitched in January 2006, nobody wants to be w

ho they used to be, including us. Media identities, like m

arket share, are up for grabs... If we w

ere launching today, the �rst song I'd tee up would be the [1980s band] Plim

souls' 'Everywhere at O

nce'. (Lowry 2006, 50) This is a notion echoed by Angel Gam

bino, MTV N

etworks U

K's VP of comm

ercial strategy and digital media: 'M

TV has realized that it needs to move beyond TV to engage view

ers via the full range of emerging digital devices' (Jones 2006, 21). W

hile it may be the case that 'The M

TV brand, content and programm

ing have always been

perfectly suited to digital platforms,' as Gam

bino remarks, 'netw

ork capacity and the device capability haven't been there until now' (Jones 2006, 21). And, though G

ambino continues on that this project goes w

ay beyond user generated content... it's about giving audiences complete control of... our program

ming... giving them

the chance to come up w

ith the kind of ideas that we w

ould never think of (Jones 2006, 21) it is clear that the speci�c content of their programm

ing has taken - in no small w

ay - a backseat to the imperial dispossession of the m

eans of producing and engaging popular culture. Head of interactive operations at M

TV Netw

orks UK & Ireland, Matthew

Kershaw, explains: O

ur business

isn't about worshipping at the altar of TV anym

ore... We have to focus on being w

here the audience needs us to be, whether that's on a tw

o-inch screen or a 42-inch high-de�nition one. What is increasingly im

portant is capturing the spatial relations implicit in contem

porary structures of feeling: looking in at that which is so w

idely meaningful and yet enclosed and elite. 'There are very strong em

otional bene�ts from having a rem

ote control in your hand,' explains Kerhsaw, 'that you can use to get closer to the program

you're watching'. W

ith this knowledge M

TV and other brands in the MTV N

etworks have begun to form

strategic alliances and partnerships with com

munications providers like AT&

T Inc and

and Verizon to monopolize not just their audiences' im

aginations, but the means - the 3600 geographies - of im

agining. Currently, MTV is able to reach nearly 750 m

illion cellular phone users through its 57 wireless deals w

orldwide. Som

e such deals, like that with A

mp'd M

obile, allow the view

ing of program from

all the MTV N

etworks' channels (Jones 2006; Low

ry 2006). Along the same lines, the M

TV Networks acquired, in M

ay of 2006, x�re, Inc., 'the fastest-growing online gam

ing comm

unication and comm

unity platform in the w

orld' for US$102 m

illion (Viacom 2006b). Further, the M

TV Netw

orks and Google Inc. began a collaboration in the sum

mer of 2006 innovating a video distribution m

odel 'that will

situation. The GM of M

TV, David Cohn, explains 'It's all about casting a w

ider net. Control Freak has been a gratifying success, in terms of interactive TV. The show

gets an average of 250,000 Web site visitors an hour. M

TV 360 is not the corporation's �rst foray into 'interactive' programm

ing. In 1995, MTV (U

S) produced a show called Yack Live, w

hich included scrolling live comm

ents from audience em

ails as videos played. In 1997, the (US) netw

ork 'reinvented' itself after several years of declining ratings with the unveiling of a huge studio in the m

iddle of New

York City's recently renovated Times Square. The studio w

as designed and structured for interactivity of all sorts: huge window

s that allowed pedestrians to look in and

�exible outdoor and indoor camera architecture allow

ing out-of-the-studio �lming. These innovations on the landscape allow

ed for new program

ming opportunities, like the 1999 interactive gam

e show, W

eb Riot. Likewise, this landscape also allow

s for MTV's �agship video countdow

n show, Total Request Live, versions of w

hich exist (in similar studio landscapes) from

Warsaw

to Mum

bai. In July 2004, MTV Europe built a sim

ilar glassy studio on London's Leicester Square as the stage for its 'European' version of TRL. Utilizing the W

eb (and its optical infrastructure) and integrating new form

s of comm

unications into their monopoly pow

er became the new

wrinkle in M

TV's targeting strategies. These infrastructures a lso enable a

, into their monopoly pow

er became the new

wrinkle in M

TV's targeting strategies. These infrastructures also enable a feedback loop for what M

TV/MTV2/ M

TVFilms president at the tim

e Van To�er describes as the netw

ork's target audience's insatiable hunger for 'access and behind-the-scenes information'. Experiencing the contra-dictions of their w

idespread alienation from popular cultural production, '[audiences] w

ant a much m

ore individualized experience and more interaction w

ith each other and with the artists', explains M

TV International Group chairm

an Nicholas Butterw

orth in 2001. He continues that the corporation plans to m

ake 'convergence the next great reinvention of MTV. W

ith MTV 360,

all three platforms are di�erent but connected', em

ploying 'a deeper integration of comm

unities, with the ability for users to see each other and talk to each other w

herever they are'. MTV 360 encapsulates a relative expansion w

ithin the industrial production of culture, incorporating newly electri�ed aspects of everyday life, branding them

, and exerting proprietary authority over them. 'W

e wanted M

TV 360 to be more than cross-prom

otional marketing', explains Judy M

cGrath, then-president of the M

TV Group and chairm

an of Interactive Music(now

president of MTV N

etworks), 'W

e wanted it to connect the M

TV viewers'. And through 2005 this strategy w

as wildly successful. As broadband m

edia, portable

digital technology, and online comm

unity proliferation accelerated in the US throughout early 2006, M

TV began to push its multi-platform

programm

ing into high gear, with the 2006 Video M

usic Awards as a test case. The VM

As had been experiencing constant slippage in their ratings. President of M

TV, Christina Norm

an, explains: Our audience experiences entertainm

ent on multiple platform

s so we are m

aking the 2006 VMAs a m

ultiscreen, interactive experience that will give them

more access to the VM

As on m

ore platforms than ever before, w

ith a live alternate feed of the big show available on M

TV Over drive, giving fans a �rst ever live behind the scenes view

of the VMAs. Sean M

oran, EVP, MTV 360

serve consumers, w

eb publishers and advertisers'. Judy McG

rath remarks of the collaboration, 'O

ur brands are great navigation tools for our audiences, and this deal with G

oogle will enable us to follow

and lead them to new

places'. In this regard, the capital intensive transformation of the terrain of everyday life - including the body - is m

ade into not simply an ad display but a m

ulti-directional feedback mechanism

whereby targeting and transform

ing, leading and following, production and reception are coalesced w

ithin the proprietary and pleasurable force of alienation. What this advancing technological struggle over m

aintaining rentable audiences represents, however, is also the ever-advancing blur

of advertising and consumer targeting w

ith the practice of every-day life. In 2006, MTV form

ed a new feedback/ targeting project called, 'View

ser Labs'. The labs, a partnership between the netw

ork, its advertising sponsors, and other media agencies, are intended to pioneer m

ore targeting innovations (Eldridge 2006). As Sean Moran, M

TV's Senior Vice President of Ad Sales, exclaims, View

ser Labs represents the kind of revolutionary collaboration that only MTV can bring to the advertising com

munity... Together w

ith innovative clients and agencies, we are going to �nd the best w

ay to evolve the advertising model and enhance the view

ing experience for our audience. The Labs, however, are strategizing

well beyond w

hat we m

ay simply think of as an 'enhanced view

ing experience'. Indeed, according to Viacom, the View

ser Labs will: rethink every m

inute of viewers'. .. Experiences across M

TV's multiple screens, from

pods to programm

ing to promo spots to product integration to com

mercial tim

e and more. The purpose of View

ser Labs is to create an open-ended dialogue between the netw

ork and multiple sponsor partners that w

ill take the industry beyond the 30-second spot and the banner ad, opening up new w

indows and opportunities for all parties. (Viacom

2006d) While, M

TV's Viewser Labs w

ill be what Viacom

calls 'a unique collaboration', it signi�es something m

ore general, the broader geographic c lass

strategies engaged between clients, advertising agencies and num

erous internal[network] departm

ents including ad sales, integrated marketing, on –air prom

os, programm

ing, consumer m

arketing, research and more.Cable television m

ade MTV both possible and necessary. Though it had been in use - delivering netw

ork broadcasts to remote parts of the U

S, via surplus military coaxial cable - since the early 1950s, cable em

erged as a key US grow

th industry internationally in the mid-1970s and early 1980s. O

n the �rst Tuesday of March 1981, after m

uch planning on how to penetrate the expanding basic cable m

arket, the Warner-Am

ex Satellite Entertainment Com

pany launched MTV, a 24-hour 'video

music netw

ork', that would radiate its �rst program

ming roughly �ve m

onths later, on 1 August. Though without m

uch fanfare and on dubious �nancial footing, the importance of M

TV became apparent early on. But this im

portance was no accident. M

TV's pop cultural prowess w

as the product of intense research and the culmination of new

techniques and technologies. While broadcast television had developed around a paradigm

of replicating successful show form

ulas and striving for broad popularity, the proliferation of cable infrastructure developed concomitantly w

ith new program

ming strategies of targeting key (those w

ith high spending power) audiences, know

n as 'quality demographics'

Thus, audience research was no longer (only) a w

ay of measuring popularity after the fact, but rather a w

ay of producing popularity through the construction of a target audience“. When Bob Pittm

an began conducting research for the viability of a station that combined his generation's tw

o favorite pastimes - w

atching TV and listening to the radio - it was already in the context of the existing know

ledge that 'young, urban adults (especially females) aged 18-49 w

ere the prime consum

ers of the types of goods advertised on TV'. Thus, Rolling Stone Magazine described Pittm

an's penchant for market research and a w

illingness to discard traditional 'wisdom

' in favor of pursuing the 'real meaning' of the data

compiled by phone calls, sales-trend analyses and surveys of the M

ood of the Nation. M

TV began as an elaborate simultaneous targeting and production of both an audience and form

s of already-popular media culture. W

ASEC's audience research team

, led by Marshall Cohen, discovered that no channel w

as speci�cally targeting America's m

ost a�uent dem

ographic group, post-war 'baby-boom

ers' aged 12-34 and began testing the MTV concept at length w

ith representatives of the target demographic. Their surveys provided evidence that 85 per cent of those polled expressed excitem

ent over 'a cable channel that merged television and rock and roll', w

hich was used to elicit the cooperation of the record

companies, advertisers and cable operators needed to launch the project. But it w

as, perhaps even more im

portantly, Pittman's participant-observation practices, relating the qualitative experience of his ow

n 'psychographic' group, his status as a cultural double agent, metabolizing the details of his lived experiences that w

ere central to its success. In October of 1982, A.C. N

ielsen released a survey of MTV view

ers, indicating 85 percent of the 2,000 respondents in the intended demographic group w

atched MTV, and those that did view

ed it an average of 4.6 hours a week. Furtherm

ore, MTV's success as a platform

to sell was im

mediately apparent as '63 percent of the survey respondents said they purchased N

o se

trend analyses and surveys of the Mood of the N

ation. MTV began as an elaborate sim

ultaneous targeting and production of both an audience and forms of already-popular m

edia culture. WA

SEC's audience research team, led by M

arshall Cohen, discovered that no channel was speci�cally targeting A

merica's m

ost a�uent dem

ographic group, post-war 'baby-boom

ers' aged 12-34 and began testing the MTV concept at length w

ith representatives of the target demographic. Their surveys provided evidence that 85 per cent of those polled expressed excitem

ent over 'a cable channe l that merged television and rock and roll', w

hich was used to elicit the cooperation of the record com

panies, advertisers and cable operators

of his own 'psychographic' group, his status as a cultural double agent, m

etabolizing the details of his lived experiences that were central to its success. In O

ctober of 1982, A.C. N

ielsen released a survey of MTV view

ers, indicating 85 percent of the 2,000 respondents in the intended demographic group w

atched MTV, and those that did view

ed it an average of 4.6 hours a week. Furtherm

ore, MTV's success as a platform

to sell was im

mediately apparent as '63 percent of the survey respondents said they purchased an artist's album

after viewing a clip featuring the artist's m

usic'. This success involved both expanding venues for engaging the 1980s' pop culture explosion and the excitement it entailed, and instra tegic, if

marketing platform

, so too did Hollywood. In the early 1980s, m

ovie soundtracks became critical com

ponents of �lm m

arketing, revolving around the marriage of popular m

usic artists/ teen idols with the visual dram

a of �lm clips and m

ini-movie trailers. A

s Gordon W

eaver of Paramount Pictures explains: That's because the original intent of these m

usic videos is to promote the m

ovie, although there's spillover bene�t to the record when the m

ovie is played... [Paramount Pictures distributes the clips to M

TV and other television outlets, as well as locally to clubs.] W

e do this through our o�ces in N

ew York and our 43 advertising agencies around the country...It's a godsend. The dem

ographics are so perfect wit h m

usic video.

million prom

oting Flashdance, Weaver explained: W

e incorporated the music into all of our radio and TV spots. If you have a single... [Irene Cara's 'W

hat a Feeling'] playing on the radio, the spots are like cross-pollination. This process was perhaps sum

med up best by G

ary LeMel, Colum

bia Pictures' Colfax division executive, Hollyw

ood sees a way to get a lot of [free] advertising and m

arketing for its target audience. The target audience for MTV is the sam

e target for pictures. You need the 12 to 25 demographic. But, M

TV's innovations in video music also rede�ned the structure of pop expressive form

s. In the early 1980s, Bob Pittman, co-founder of M

TV, comm

ents on the stylistic innovations developed by MTV: W

hat we've

you feel a certain way as opposed to you w

alking away w

ith any particular knowledge. H

e continues with a M

cCluhanian sense of opportunism, You're dealing w

ith a culture of TV babies.., what kids can't do today is follow

things too long. They get bored and distracted, their minds w

ander. If information is presented to them

in tight fragments that don't necessarily follow

each other, kids can comprehend that. Part of M

TV's innovative dominance has been not sim

ply concocting new form

s of surveillance for understanding how to better predict its target dem

ographic's preferences and habits, but further to distil such emotions, or in Raym

ond William

s' terms, structures of feeling into persuasive m

oods or emotive currency

half interest in Showtim

e. Viacom's acquisition of the M

TV Netw

orks represented a synergy within a synergy, as the um

brella company already included several channels: M

TV, Nickelodeon and VH

-1. How

ever, MTV itself w

as the most im

portant property in the MTV N

etworks. The netw

ork's ability to captivate young audiences through its quick pace and �ashy graphics made it a valuable asset for advertising revenue and its style w

as becoming popular and highly in�uential in other m

edia. In 1996 the MTV N

etworks launched M

TV-2, which w

ould allow M

TV to focus more on airing traditional program

ming, rather than m

usic videos. Despite slouching ratings in the early 1990s, M

TV has always rem

ained author itative in pop

called 'cool hunting', where researchers visit teens' hom

es, hangout in their bedrooms and learn w

hat moves them

emotionally, aesthetically. Som

e such researchers, like at Look-Look, contract out their services. If a client wants to 'create a w

hole new brand or... product w

ith a company that targets a speci�c audience,' explain D

. Gordon and S. Lee, Look- Look co-founders, they take out inform

ation to assist in inspiring project designers, in helping them m

arket the new product, even in nam

ing the product, and then eventually testing. They use our database to recruit kids to test the products out, stu� like that. But such apparatuses of industrial cultural production, social research, are also further enclosed as co mpetitive

MTV's cultural authority. Todd Cunningham

, MTV's Senior VP of Brand Strategy and Planning, explains how

the corporation uses such 'instruments' to sim

ultaneously represent and direct popular culture: The research e�orts at MTV are certainly legendary. Ever since the very beginning, there's been a kind of feverish addiction to research and understanding young people.... In virtually every m

eeting that we have, research kicks the m

eeting o�. There's a signal right there to the organization that,' Hey, you've got to pay attention to w

hat the viewers are about and w

hat kinds of things are happening with them

,' whether it be shifts in the ratings, shifts in, kind of view

ership behavior and patterns, to the more qualitative kind of

doing more than 200 focus groups per year. How

ever, for MTV's research e�orts, it is im

portant not to do them in traditional places and geographies, frequently doing focus groups on basketball courts, for instance, or store parking lots. O

ften though, MTV w

ill send its quasi-social scientists to people's homes 'w

here [they] get the great chance to actually go out and ri�e through kids' closets and go through their music collections'. O

nce a year, MTV researchers perform

what they call, 'ethnography'. Cunningham

details: An ethnography study.., .is a study that basically goes out and tries to understand the di�erences betw

een audiences - to try to uncover nuances that make them

separate from other ones... . W

e go through

with them

about what it's like to date today; w

hat it's like dealing with their parents; w

hat things stress them out the m

ost; what things are really on the hearts and m

inds of them and their peers. W

e have them show

us their favorite clothing out�ts, what they w

ear to parties, some things from

their photo albums and things that w

hich really mean som

ething to them. And then w

e're allowed to com

e back and translate that into programm

ing opportunities or just insights in general about what the audience actually does. It is through these m

ethods of surveillance that MTV is able to adm

inistrate through simultaneously leading and follow

ing. It concomitantly 'dem

ocratizes' its production process, while im

plicitly negotiating

fantastic and targeted spectacles so that 'none may escape'. And w

hile this strategy involves targeting particular aggregate groups, audiences, often it entails using speci�c mem

bers of those groups as intermediaries, key types of consum

ers - recruited wittingly or unw

ittingly as double agents for capital. As M

ichael J. Wolf, M

TV's current president and chief operating o�cer' recently com

mented: Advertisers w

ould rather connect with that one alpha consum

er [young trendsetter] vs. three beta consumers ... W

e understand that audience, and we can help them

do that. Trendsetting, 'Alpha', consum

ers themselves are increasingly interpolated into the m

eans of capital circulation. Such techniques have been deeply successful

the 12- 24 set for 10 straight years, fueled by the breakaway hit 'The O

sbournes,' as well as long-tim

e favorites Real World and Total Request Live. O

sbournes, in fact, is achieving broadcast-level rates at $135,000t o $150,000 for a 30-seconds pot.19 In 1999, MTV w

as ranked number six am

ong basic cable channels, worth roughly U

S$400 million in sales.20 The M

TV Netw

orks total annual (2006) sales are estimated at US$1.3 billion, em

ploying 1100 people. And, now m

ore than ever MTV and its international netw

ork brands (see Plate 4) serve a critical role in the international division of labor as a hub for a variety of other corporate interests. For instance, MTV's international reach now

allows H

ollywood studios and record labels

within w

hich the structure and control of social environments is central. 360 0 of M

TV As M

TV's 2001/2002 Media Kit suggests cavalierly: 'Advertising is an im

age business, my friend - you've got to be seen in all the right circles' (M

TV 2001/2002, media kit 1). The netw

ork's diversi�cation into three prongs - MTV (cable), M

TV.com (internet) and M

TV2 (digital cable, but available to antennae in some locales) - is consciously designed to increase the im

pact of advertising. As the Media Kit explains: The next generation m

edia experience? You're lookin' at it. Each MTV platform

has distinct strengths. MTV 3600 exploits the best of each, then integrates them

to maxim

ize the impact of any program

ming event. O

ne event + three

referring to compass-headings or 'azim

uths' related to mapping, navigation and targeting. It also refers to 'full-spectrum

' intelligence and surveillance; knowing all of the conditions of a given battle or 'operation'. 3600 also often refers to a full-im

mersion virtual environm

ent; 3600 battle simulations are currently the cutting edge of training ground support for air strikes (and the dream

of the electronic gaming industry). The term

recently also refers to government and corporate personnel evaluations, w

here employees are evaluated through aggregated 'full-spectrum

' surveys of all co-workers rather than only im

mediate superiors. In m

any ways, all such connotations of the term

apply to MTV. 3600 alludes as m

uch to 'full

mechanism

(in Europe and the US) for utilizing their new m

ulti-platform targeting strategies to 'ensure clients achieve strong return[s] on investm

ent through all forms of m

arketing comm

unication'. An im

portant part of their success, they explain, is their ability to 'understand and interpret the behavior of our viewers, in relation to TV and life in general' (viacom

brandsolution.co.uk; mtv-m

edia.com). But, M

TV's 3600 strategy also responds to competitive developm

ents in everyday life, namely the Internet, cyber-com

munities and other 'cyber-practices' Like in the w

orkplace, the added machinery attached to leisure practices increase the am

ount of interconnected tasks possible at one time; they increase the rela tive

unusual for them to be talking on the phone w

hile they're watching TV and using their com

puter to download m

usic or IM their friends. M

TV 360 responds to our viewers by giving them

the choices they want. (H

ay 2001, 66)23 The acceleration and compression of social activity (m

easured in time) in the so-called 'N

etwork Society' is both a problem

and opportunity for television stations like MTV. W

hile there are more possible distractions from

the advertising messages rented on that aggregated social tim

e, there are also relatively more spaces to engage social attention by advertisers, there are m

ore platforms for industrial cultural production. Interactive program

ming events capitalize on this situation. The G

M of M

TV,

250,000 Web site visitors an hour. M

TV 360 is not the corporation's �rst foray into 'interactive' programm

ing. In 1995, MTV (U

S) produced a show called Yack Live, w

hich included scrolling live comm

ents from audience em

ails as videos played. In 1997, the (US) netw

ork 'reinvented' itself after several years of declining ratings with the unveiling of a huge studio in the m

iddle of New

York City's recently renovated Times Square. The studio w

as designed and structured for interactivity of all sorts: huge window

s that allowed pedestrians to look in and perhaps get caught on cam

era, �brotic infrastructure allowing �exible interfacing w

ith audiences across a variety of comm

unications platforms, and �exible outdoor an d indoor

interactive game show

, Web Riot. Likew

ise, this landscape also allows for M

TV's �agship video countdown show

, Total Request Live, versions of which exist (in sim

ilar studio landscapes) from W

arsaw to M

umbai. In July 2004, M

TV Europe built a similar glassy studio on London's Leicester Square as the stage for its 'European' version of TRL. U

tilizing the Web (and its optical infrastructure) and integrating new

forms of com

munications into their m

onopoly power becam

e the new w

rinkle in MTV's targeting strategies. These infrastructures also enable a feedback loop for w

hat MTV/M

TV2/ MTVFilm

s president at the time Van To�

er describes as the network's target audience's insatiable hunger for 'access and behind-th e-scenes

individualized experience and more interaction w

ith each other and with the artists', explains M

TV International Group chairm

an Nicholas Butterw

orth in 2001. He continues that the corporation plans to m

ake 'convergence the next great reinvention of MTV. W

ith MTV 360, all three platform

s are di�erent but connected', employing 'a deeper integration of com

munities, w

ith the ability for users to see each other and talk to each other wherever they are'. M

TV 360 encapsulates a relative expansion within the industrial production of culture, incorporating new

ly electri�ed aspects of everyday life, branding them, and exerting proprietary authority over them

. 'We w

anted MTV 360 to be m

ore than cross-promotional m

arketing',

the MTV view

ers'. And through 2005 this strategy was w

ildly successful. As broadband media, portable digital technology, and online com

munity proliferation accelerated in the U

S throughout early 2006, MTV began to push its m

ulti-platform program

ming into high gear, w

ith the 2006 Video Music Aw

ards as a test case. The VMAs had been experiencing constant slippage in their ratings. President of M

TV, Christina Norman, explains: O

ur audience experiences entertainment on m

ultiple platforms so w

e are making the 2006 VM

As a multiscreen, interactive experience that w

ill give them m

ore access to the VMAs on m

ore platforms than ever before, w

ith a live alternate feed of the big show available on M

TV Over dr ive, giving fans

partners that understand multiplatform

programm

ing and know how

to reach our audience in new creative w

ays on air, online, on the ground and on their mobile phones.... W

e are working closely w

ith all of our sponsors to create a seamless entertainm

ent experience that will further solidify our leadership position in this rapidly evolving space. This frantic push into digital platform

s began with Viacom

being outbid by Rupert Murdoch in 2005 to purchase the profoundly popular (54 m

illion registered users) online comm

unity 'Myspace'. Since then, as Business W

eek relates, 'McG

rath has declared "a digital Marshall Plan"... The troops m

ust now deliver services across new

broadband channels, over cell phones, and via video

Cable television made M

TV both possible and necessary. Though it had been in use - delivering network broadcasts to rem

ote parts of the US, via surplus m

ilitary coaxial cable - since the early 1950s, cable emerged as a key U

S growth industry internationally in the m

id-1970s and early 1980s. On the �rst Tuesday of M

arch 1981, after much planning on how

to penetrate the expanding basic cable market, the W

arner-Amex Satellite Entertainm

ent Company launched M

TV, a 24-hour 'video music netw

ork', that would radiate its �rst program

ming roughly �ve m

onths later, on 1 August. Though without m

uch fanfare and on dubious �nancial footing, the importance of M

TV became apparent early on. But this im

portan ce was no

television had developed around a paradigm of replicating successful show

formulas and striving for broad popularity, the proliferation of cable infrastructure developed concom

itantly with new

programm

ing strategies of targeting key (those with high spending pow

er) audiences, known as 'quality dem

ographics'. Thus, audience research was no longer (only) a w

ay of measuring popularity after the fact, but rather a w

ay of producing popularity through the construction of a target audience“. When Bob Pittm

an began conducting research for the viability of a station that combined his generation's tw

o favorite pastimes - w

atching TV and listening to the radio - it was already in the context of the existing know

ledge that

described Pittman's penchant for m

arket research and a willingness to discard traditional 'w

isdom' in favor of pursuing the 'real m

eaning' of the data compiled by phone calls, sales-trend analyses and surveys of the M

ood of the Nation. M

TV began as an elaborate simultaneous targeting and production of both an audience and form

s of already-popular media culture. W

ASEC's audience research team, led by M

arshall Cohen, discovered that no channel was speci�cally targeting A

merica's m

ost a�uent dem

ographic group, post-war 'baby-boom

ers' aged 12-34 and began testing the MTV concept at length w

ith representatives of the target demographic. Their surveys provided evidence that 85 per cent of those po lled

and cable operators needed to launch the project. But it was, perhaps even m

ore importantly, Pittm

an's participant-observation practices, relating the qualitative experience of his own 'psychographic' group, his status as a cultural double agent, m

etabolizing the details of his lived experiences that were central to its success. In O

ctober of 1982, A.C. Nielsen released a survey of M

TV viewers, indicating 85 percent of the 2,000 respondents in the intended dem

ographic group watched M

TV, and those that did viewed it an average of 4.6 hours a w

eek. Furthermore, M

TV's success as a plat form to sell w

as imm

ediately apparent as '63 percent of the survey respondents said they purchased an artist's album after view

ing a clip

intensifying a strategic, if uneven, convergence of the means of cultural expression. As the m

usic industry became increasingly inseparable from

music videos and M

TV's living room m

arketing platform, so too did H

ollywood. In the early 1980s, m

ovie soundtracks became critical com

ponents of �lm m

arketing, revolving around the marriage of popular m

usic artists/ teen idols with the visual dram

a of �lm clips and m

ini-movie trailers. As G

ordon Weaver of Param

ount Pictures explains: That's because the original intent of these music videos is to prom

ote the movie, although there's spil lover bene�t to the record w

hen the movie is played... [Param

ount Pictures distributes the clips to MTV and other television outlets, as w

ell as

with m

usic video. Paramount's saucy pop classic, Flashdance (1983), broke �rst ground in this sort of production and distribution strategy. After Param

ount spent close to US $3 m

illion promoting Flashdance, W

eaver explained: We incorporated the m

usic into all of our radio and TV spots. If you have a single... [Irene Cara's 'What a Feeling'] playing on the radio, the spots are like cross-pollination. This process w

as perhaps summ

ed up best by Gary LeM

el, Columbia Pictures' Colfax division executive, H

ollywood sees a w

ay to get a lot of [free] advertising and marketing for its target audience. The target audience for M

TV is the same target for pictures. You need the 12 to 25 dem

ographic. But, MTV's innovations in vid eo m

usic also

What w

e've introduced with M

TV is a non-narrative form. As opposed to conventional television, w

here you rely on plot and continuity, we rely on m

ood and emotion. W

e make you feel a certain w

ay as opposed to you walking aw

ay with any particular know

ledge. He continues w

ith a McCluhanian sense of opportunism

, You're dealing with a culture of TV babies.., w

hat kids can't do today is follow things too long. They get bored and distracted, their m

inds wander. If inform

ation is presented to them in tight fragm

ents that don't necessarily follow each other, kids can com

prehend that. Part of MTV's innovative dom

inance has been not simply concocting new

forms of surveillance for understanding how

to bette r predict its

or emotive currency to better inspire its cultural authority. Viacom

purchased the MTV N

etworks in Septem

ber of 1985; it also acquired from W

arner Comm

unications the second half interest in Showtim

e. Viacom's acquisition of the M

TV Netw

orks represented a synergy within a synergy, as the um

brella company already included several channels: M

TV, Nickelodeon and VH

-1. How

ever, MTV itself w

as the most im

portant property in the MTV N

etworks. The netw

ork's ability to captivate young audiences through its quick pace and �ashy graphics made it a valuable asset for advertising revenue and its style w

as becoming popular and highly in�uential in other m

edia. In 1996 the MTV N

etworks launched M

TV-2, which w

ould

authoritative in pop culture production, in no small part because of its relentless search for em

ergent cultural forms for incorporation into its productions. This feedback process is called 'cool hunting', w

here researchers visit teens' homes, hangout in their bedroom

s and learn what m

oves them em

otionally, aesthetically. Some such researchers, like at Look-Look, contract out their services. If a client w

ants to 'create a whole new

brand or... product with a com

pany that targets a speci�c audience,' explain D. G

ordon and S. Lee, Look- Look co-founders, they take out information to assist in inspiring project designers, in helping them

market the new

product, even in naming the product, and then eventually testing. They use our

competitive investm

ents. This ability to create its own proprietary research, em

ployed to realize stronger or more authoritative m

onopoly rent, has been critical to maintaining M

TV's cultural authority. Todd Cunningham, M

TV's Senior VP of Brand Strategy and Planning, explains how the corporation uses such 'instrum

ents' to simultaneously represent and direct popular culture: The research e�orts at M

TV are certainly legendary. Ever since the very beginning, there's been a kind of feverish addiction to research and understanding young people.... In virtually every meeting that w

e have, research kicks the meeting o�. There's a signal right there to the organization that,' H

ey, you've got to pay attention to what the v iew

ers are

qualitative kind of touchy-feely things of attitudinal changes and things like that. As Cunningham

explains, MTV uses form

s of more traditional research, such as ratings, and doing m

ore than 200 focus groups per year. How

ever, for MTV's research e�orts, it is im

portant not to do them in traditional places and geographies, frequently doing focus groups on basketball courts, for instance, or store parking lots. O

ften though, MTV w

ill send its quasi-social scientists to people's homes 'w

here [they] get the great chance to actually go out and ri�e through kids' closets and go through their music collections'. O

nce a year, MTV researchers perform

what they call, 'ethnography'. Cunningham

details: An ethnography study.., .i s a study that

through their music collections. W

e go to nightclubs with them

.... We shut the door in their bedroom

s and talk to them about issues that they feel are really im

portant to them. W

e talk with them

about what it's like to date today; w

hat it's like dealing with their parents; w

hat things stress them out the m

ost; what things are really on the hearts and m

inds of them and their peers. W

e have them show

us their favorite clothing out�ts, what they w

ear to parties, some things from

their photo albums and things that w

hich really mean som

ething to them. A

nd then we're allow

ed to come back and translate that into program

ming opportunities or just insights in general about w

hat the audience actually does. It is through these

negotiating the submission of audiences to their authority - conform

ing the structures of feeling of an expanding population to new sets of rents, propertied authority, but also fantastic and targeted spectacles so that 'none m

ay escape'. And w

hile this strategy involves targeting particular aggregate groups, audiences, often it entails using speci�c mem

bers of those groups as intermediaries, key types of consum

ers - recruited wittingly or unw

ittingly as double agents for capital. As M

ichael J. Wolf, M

TV's current president and chief operating o�cer' recently com

mented: Advertisers w

ould rather connect with that one alpha consum

er [young trendsetter] vs. three beta consumers ... W

e understand that audience, and we can help

deeply successful for the network and have set standards for m

edia brand strategies. In a 2002 speech, Sumner Redstone elaborates, M

TV is hotter than ever as the #1 network w

ith the 12- 24 set for 10 straight years, fueled by the breakaway hit 'The O

sbournes,' as well as long-tim

e favorites Real World and Total Request Live. O

sbournes, in fact, is achieving broadcast-level rates at $135,000t o $150,000 for a 30-seconds pot.19 In 1999, MTV w

as ranked number six am

ong basic cable channels, worth roughly U

S$400 million in sales.20 The M

TV Netw

orks total annual (2006) sales are estimated at U

S$1.3 billion, employing 1100 people. And, now

more than ever M

TV and its international network brands (see Plate 4) serve a critical role

and record labels to coordinate product releases simultaneously around the w

orld. It is an international class strategy and imperialistic project in the plainest term

s. This is a project within w

hich the structure and control of social environments is central. 360 0 of M

TV As M

TV's 2001/2002 Media Kit suggests cavalierly: 'Advertising is an im

age business, my friend - you've got to be seen in all the right circles' (M

TV 2001/2002, media kit 1). The netw

ork's diversi�cation into three prongs - MTV (cable), M

TV.com (internet) and M

TV2 (digital cable, but available to antennae in some locales) - is consciously designed to increase the im

pact of advertising. As the Media Kit explains: The next generation m

edia experience? You're lookin' at it.

event. One event + three screens = lim

itless possibilities. Wherever they go, there you [advertisers] are'. The idea of a 3600 strategy originates in m

ilitary Information O

perations, referring to compass-headings or 'azim

uths' related to mapping, navigation and targeting. It also refers to 'full-spectrum

' intelligence and surveillance; knowing all of the conditions of a given battle or 'operation'. 3600 also often refers to a full-im

mersion virtual environm

ent; 3600 battle simulations are currently the cutting edge of training ground support for air strikes (and the dream

of the electronic gaming industry). The term

recently also refers to government and corporate personnel evaluations, w

here employees are evaluated throug h aggregated

spectrum' targeting and em

ersion as it does feedback and evaluation mechanism

s. Viacom Brand Solutions, form

ed in the same year as the 3600 initiative, 2001, is an institutional m

echanism (in Europe and the U

S) for utilizing their new m

ulti-platform targeting strategies to 'ensure clients achieve strong return[s] on investm

ent through all forms of m

arketing comm

unication'. An important part of their success, they explain, is their ability to 'understand and interpret the behavior of our view

ers, in relation to TV and life in general' (viacombrandsolution.co.uk; m

tv-media.com

). But, MTV's 3600 strategy also responds to com

petitive developments in everyday life, nam

ely the Internet, cyber-comm

unities and other ' cy ber-practices'

time; they increase the relative 'productivity' of leisure. As Van To�

er, MTV/M

TV2/MTV Film

s President explains, we've found that this audience m

ulti-tasks like no other. It's not unusual for them to be talking on the phone w

hile they're watching TV and using their com

puter to download m

usic or IM their friends. M

TV 360 responds to our viewers by giving them

the choices they want. (H

ay 2001, 66)23 The acceleration and compression of social activity (m

easured in time) in the so-called 'N

etwork Society' is both a problem

and opportunity for television stations like MTV. W

hile there are more possible distractions from

the advertising messages rented on that aggregated social tim

e, there are also relatively more spa ces to engage

comm

unity platform in the w

orld' for US$102 million (Viacom

2006b). Further, the MTV N

etworks and G

oogle Inc. began a collaboration in the summ

er of 2006 innovating a video distribution model 'that w

ill serve consumers, w

eb publishers and advertisers'. Judy McG

rath remarks of the collaboration, 'O

ur brands are great navigation tools for our audiences, and this deal with G

oogle will enable us to follow

and lead them to new

places'. In this regard, the capital intensive transformation of the terrain of everyday life - including the body - is m

ade into not simply an ad display but a m

ulti-directional feedback mechanism

whereby targeting and transform

ing, leading and following, production and reception are coales ced w

ithin the

force of alienation. What this advancing technological struggle over m

aintaining rentable audiences represents, however, is also the ever-advancing blurring of advertising and consum

er targeting with the practice of every-day life. In 2006, M

TV formed a new

feedback/ targeting project called, 'Viewser Labs'. The labs, a partnership betw

een the network, its advertising sponsors, and other m

edia agencies, are intended to pioneer more targeting innovations (Eldridge 2006). As Sean M

oran, MTV's Senior Vice President of Ad Sales, exclaim

s, Viewser Labs represents the kind of revolutionar y collaboration that only M

TV can bring to the advertising comm

unity... Together with innovative clients and agencies, w

e are goin g to �nd the

we m

ay simply think of as an 'enhanced view

ing experience'. Indeed, according to Viacom, the View

ser Labs will: rethink every m

inute of viewers'. .. Experiences across M

TV's multiple screens, from

pods to programm

ing to promo spots to product integration to com

mercial tim

e and more. The purpose of View

ser Labs is to create an open-ended dialogue between the netw

ork and multiple sponsor partners that w

ill take the industry beyond the 30-second spot and the banner ad, opening up new w

indows and opportunities for all parties. (Viacom

2006d) While, M

TV's Viewser Labs w

ill be what Viacom

calls 'a unique collaboration', it signi�es something m

ore general, the broader geographic class strategies engaged bet ween clients,

Cable television made M

TV both possible and necessary. Though it had been in use - delivering network broadcasts to rem

ote parts of the US, via surplus m

ilitary coaxial cable - since the early 1950s, cable emerged as a key U

S growth industry internationally in the m

id-1970s and early 1980s. On the �rst Tuesday of M

arch 1981, after much planning on how

to penetrate the expanding basic cable market, the W

arner-Amex Satellite Entertainm

ent Company launched M

TV, a 24-hour 'video music netw

ork', that would radiate its �rst program

ming roughly �ve m

onths later, on 1 August. Though without m

uch fanfare and on dubious �nancial footing, the importance of M

TV became apparent early on. But this im

portance wa s no accident.

television had developed around a paradigm of replicating successful show

formulas and striving for broad popularity, the proliferation of cable infrastructure developed concom

itantly with new

programm

ing strategies of targeting key (those with high spending pow

er) audiences, known as 'quality dem

ographics'. Thus, audience research was no longer (only) a w

ay of measuring popularity after the fact, but rather a w

ay of producing popularity through the construction of a target audience“. When Bob Pittm

an began conducting research for the viability of a station that combined his gene ration's tw

o favorite pastimes - w

atching TV and listening to the radio - it was already in the context of the existing know

ledge that ' young, urban

described Pittman's penchant for m

arket research and a willingness to discard traditional 'w

isdom' in favor of pursuing the 'real m

eaning' of the data compiled by phone calls, sales-trend analyses and surveys of the M

ood of the Nation. M

TV began as an elaborate simultaneous targeting and production of both an audience and form

s of already-popular media culture. W

ASEC's audience research team, led by M

arshall Cohen, discovered that no channel was speci�cally targeting Am

erica's most a�

uent demographic group, post-w

ar 'baby-boomers' aged 12-34 and began testing the M

TV concept at length with representatives of the target dem

ographic. Their surveys provided evidence that 85 per cent of those polled expressed

and cable operators needed to launch the project. But it was, perhaps even m

ore importantly, Pittm

an's participant-observation practices, relating the qualitative experience of his own 'psychographic' group, his status as a cultural double agent, m

etabolizing the details of his lived experiences that were central to its success. In O

ctober of 1982, A.C. Nielsen released a survey of M

TV viewers, indicating 85 percent of the 2,000 respondents in the intended dem

ographic group watched M

TV, and those that did viewed it an average of 4.6 hours a w

eek. Furthermore, M

TV's success as a platform to sell w

as imm

ediately apparent as '63 percent of the survey respondents said they purchased an artist's album after view

ing a clip fea turing the

intensifying a strategic, if uneven, convergence of the means of cultural expression. As the m

usic industry became increasingly inseparable from

music videos and M

TV's living room m

arketing platform, so too did H

ollywood. In the early 1980s, m

ovie soundtracks became critical com

ponents of �lm m

arketing, revolving around the marriage of popular m

usic artists/ teen idols with the visual dram

a of �lm clips and m

ini-movie trailers. As Gordon W

eaver of Paramount Pictures explains: That's because the original intent of these m

usic videos is to promote the m

ovie, although there's spillover bene�t to the record when the m

ovie is played... [Paramount Pictures distributes the clips to M

TV and other television outlets, as well as l ocally to

What w

e've introduced with M

TV is a non-narrative form. As opposed to conventional television, w

here you rely on plot and continuity, we rely on m

ood and emotion. W

e make you feel a certain w

ay as opposed to you walking aw

ay with any particular know

ledge. He continues w

ith a McCluhanian sense of opportunism

, You're dealing with a culture of TV babies.., w

hat kids can't do today is follow things too long. They get bored and distracted, their m

inds wander. If inform

ation is presented to them in tight fragm

ents that don't necessarily follow each other, kids can com

prehend that. Part of MTV's innovative dom

inance has been not simply concocting new

forms of surveillance for understanding how

to better predict its targ et demograp

preferences and habits, but further to distil such emotions, or in Raym

ond William

s' terms, structures of feeling into persuasive m

oods or emotive currency to better inspire its cultural authority. Viacom

purchased the MTV N

etworks in Septem

ber of 1985; it also acquired from W

arner Comm

unications the second half interest in Showtim

e. Viacom's acquisition of the M

TV Netw

orks represented a synergy within a synergy, as the um

brella company already included several channels: M

TV, Nickelodeon and VH

-1. How

ever, MTV itself w

as the most im

portant property in the MTV N

etworks. The netw

ork's abil ity to captivate young audiences through its quick pace and �ashy graphics made it a valuable asset for advertising revenue and its style w

as

popular and highly in�uential in other media. In 1996 the M

TV Networks launched M

TV-2, which w

ould allow M

TV to focus more on airing traditional program

ming, rather than m

usic videos. Despite slouching ratings in the early 1990s, M

TV has always rem

ained authoritative in pop culture production, in no small part because of its relentless search for em

ergent cultural forms for incorporation into its productions. This feedback process is called 'cool hunting', w

here researchers visit teens' homes, hangout in their bedroom

s and learn what m

oves them em

otionally, aesthetically. Some such researchers, like at Look-Look, contract out their services. If a client w

ants to 'create a whole new

brand or...

access and behind-the-scenes inform

ation'. Experiencing the contra-dictions of their widespread alienation

from popular cultural production, '[audiences] w

ant a much m

ore individualized experience and more interaction

with each other and w

ith the artists', explains MTV International G

roup chairman N

icholas Butterworth in 2001. H

e

He continues that the corporation plans to m

ake 'convergence the next great reinvention of MTV.W

ith MTV 360,

all three platforms are di�erent but connected', em

ploying 'a deeper integration of comm

unities, with the abi

for users to see each other and talk to each other wherever they are'. M

TV 360 encapsulates a relative expansi

within the industrial production of culture, incorporating new

ly electri�ed aspects of everyday life, branding

them, and exerting proprietary authority over them

. 'We w

anted MTV 360 to be m

ore than cross-promotion

marketing', explains Judy M

cGrath, then-president of the M

TV Group and chairm

an of Interactive Music

(now president of M

TV Netw

orks), 'We w

anted it to connect the MTV view

ers'. And through 2005 this stra

was w

ildly successful. As broadband m

edia, portable digital technology, and online comm

unity prolifer

accelerated in the US throughout early 2006, M

TV began to push its multi-platform

programm

ing into hig

gear, with the 2006 Video M

usic Awards as a test case. The VM

As had been experiencing constant slippage in t

their ratings. President of MTV, Christina N

orman, explains: O

ur audience experiences entertainment on m

ultipl

platforms so w

e are making the 2006 VM

As a m

ultiscreen, interactive experience that will give them

more access

access to the VMA

s on more platform

s than ever before, with a live alternate feed of the big show

available on M

Over drive, giving fans a �rst ever live behind the scenes view

of the VMA

s. Sean Moran, EVP, M

TV 360 Brand Sa

Sales comm

ents: We are fortunate to have a line up of sponsor partners that understand m

ultiplatform prog

and know how

to reach our audience in new creative w

ays on air, online, on the ground and on

their mobile phones.... W

e are working closely w

ith all of our sponsors to create a se

entertainment experience that w

ill further solidify our

leadership posit in this rapidly evolvi

space . This

frantic p

push

in

digital platforms began w

ith Viacom being outbid by Rupert M

urdoch in 2005 to purchase the profoundly popular (54 million registered use

online comm

unity 'Myspace'. Since then, as Business W

eek relates, 'McG

rath has declared "a digital Marshall Plan"... The troops m

ust now d

deliver services across new broadband channels, over cell phones, and via video gam

es'. As McG

rath pitched in January 2006, nobody w

wants to be w

ho they used to be, including us. Media identities, like m

arket share, are up for grabs... If we w

ere launching today, the �rst

song I'd tee up would be the [1980s band] Plim

souls' 'Everywhere at O

nce'. (Lowry 2006, 50) This is a notion echoed by Angel G

ambino,

M

TV Netw

orks UK's VP of com

mercial strategy and digital m

edia: 'MTV has realized that it needs to m

ove beyond TV to engage viewers via the

full range of em

erging digital devices' (Jones 2006, 21). While it m

ay be the case that 'The MTV brand, content and program

ming have alw

ays been

per fectly suited to digital platform

s,' as Gam

bino remarks, 'netw

ork capacity and the device capability haven't been there until now' (Jones 2006, 21). And,

though Gam

bino continues on that this project goes way beyond user generated content... it's about giving audiences com

plete control of... our programm

ing... giving them the ch

of ideas that we w

ould never th

ink of (Jones 2006, 21) it is clear that the speci�c content of their programm

ing has taken - in no small w

ay - a backseat to the imperial d

the means of producing and engaging popular culture. H

ead of interactive operations at MTV N

etworks U

K & Ireland, Matthew

Kershaw, explains: O

ur bu

business isn 't about w

orshipping at the altar of TV anymore... W

e have to focus on being where the audience needs us to be, w

hether th

on a two- inch s c reen or a 42-inch high-de�nition one. W

hat is increasingly important is capturing the spatial relations im

plicit

in contemporary structures of feeling: looking in at that w

hich is so widely m

eaningful and yet enclos

elite. 'There are very strong emotional bene�ts from

having a remote control in your

having a remote control in your hand,' explains

with m

usic video. Paramount's saucy pop classic, Flashdance (1983), broke �rst ground in this sort of production and distribution strategy. After Param

ount spent close to US $3 m

illion promoting Flashdance, W

eaver explained: We incorporated the m

usic into all of our radio and TV spots. If you have a single... [Irene Cara's 'What a Feeling'] playing on the radio, the spots are like cross-pollination. This process w

as perhaps summ

ed up best by Gary LeM

el, Columbia Pictures' Colfax division executive, H

ollywood sees a w

ay to get a lot of [free] advertising and marketing for its target audience. The target audience for M

TV is the same target for pictures. You need the 12 to 25 dem

ographic. But, MTV's inn ovations in video m

usic also rede�ned the structure of pop expressive forms. In the early

with a com

pany that targets a speci�c audience,' explain D. Gordon and S. Lee, Look- Look co-founders, they take out inform

ation to a ssist in inspiring project designers, in helping them m

arket the new product, even in nam

ing the product, and then eventually testing. They use our database to recruit kids to test the products out, stu� like that. But such apparatuses of industrial cultural production, social research, are also further enclosed as competitive investm

ents. This ability to create its own proprietary research, em

ployed to realize stronger or more authoritative m

onopoly rent, has been critical to ma inta ining M

TV's cultural authority. Todd Cunningham, M

TV's Senior VP of Brand Strategy and P la

explains how the corporation uses such 'instrum

ents' to simultaneously represent and direct popular culture: The research e�orts at M

TV are certainly legendary. Ever since the very beginning, there's been a kind of feverish addiction to research and understanding young people.... In virtually every meeting that w

e have, research kicks the meeting o�. There's a signal right there to the organization that,' H

ey, you've got to pay attention to what the view

ers are about and what kinds of things are happening w

ith them,' w

hether it be shifts in the ratings, shifts in, kind of viewershi p behavior and patterns, to the m

ore qualitative kind of touchy-feely things of attitudinal

doing more than 200 focus groups per year. H

owever, for M

TV's research e�orts, it is impo

rtant not to do them in traditional places and geographies, frequently doing focus groups on basketball courts, for instance, or store parking lots. O

ften though, MTV w

ill send its quasi-social scientists to people's homes 'w

here [they] get the great chance to actually go out and ri�e through kids' closets and go through their music collections'. O

nce a year, MTV researchers perform

what they call, 'ethnography'. Cunningham

details: An ethnography study.., .is a study that basically goes out and tries to understand the di�erences betw

een audiences - to

through their music collections. W

e go to nightclubs with them

.... We shut the

door in their bedrooms and talk to them

about issues that they feel are really important to them

. We talk w

ith them about w

hat it's like to date today; what it's like dealing w

ith their parents; what things stress them

out the most; w

hat things are really on the hearts and minds of them

and their peers. We have them

show us their favorite clothing out�ts, w

hat they wear to parties, som

e things from their photo album

s and things that which really m

ean something to them

. And then w

e're allowed to com

e back and translate that into programm

ing

of surveillance that MTV is able to adm

inistrate through simultane

ously leading and following. It concom

itantly 'democratizes' its production process, w

hile implicitly negotiating the subm

ission of audiences to their authority - conforming the structures of feeling of an expanding population to new

sets of rents, propertied authority, but also fantastic and targeted spectacles so that 'none may escape'. A

nd while this strategy involves targeting particular aggregate groups, audiences, often it entails using speci�c m

embers of those groups as interm

ediaries, key types of consumers - recruited w

ittingly or

as double agents for capital. As Michael J. W

olf, MT

V's current president and chief operating o�cer' recently com

mented: Advertisers w

ould rather connect with that one alpha consum

er [young trendsetter] vs. three beta consumers ... W

e understand that audience, and we can help them

do that. Trendsetting, 'Alpha', consumers them

selves are increasingly interpolated into the means of capital circulation. Such techniques have been deeply successful for the netw

ork and have set standard s for media brand strategies. In a 2002 speech, Sum

ner Redstone elaborates, MTV is hotter than

long-time favorites Real

World and Total Request Live. O

sbournes, in fact, is achieving broadcast-level rates at $135,000t o $150,000 for a 30-seconds pot.19 In 1999, MTV w

as ranked number six am

ong basic cable channels, worth roughly U

S$400 million in sales.20 The M

TV Netw

orks total annual (2006) sales are estimated at U

S$1.3 billion, employing 1100 people. And, now

more than ever M

TV and its international network brands (see Plate 4) serve a cr itic al role in the international division of labor as a hub for a variety of other corporate interest s . Fo r

and record labels to coordinate product releases simultaneously around the w

orld. It is an international class strategy and imperialistic project in the plainest term

s. This is a project within w

hich the structure and control of social environments is central. 360 0 of M

TV As M

TV's 2001/2002 Media Kit suggests cavalierly: 'Advertising is an im

age business, my friend - you've got to be seen in all the right circles' (M

TV 2001/2002 , media kit 1). The netw

ork's diversi�cation into thre

MTV (cable), M

TV.com (internet) and M

TV2 (digital cable, but available to antennae in some locales) - is consciously designed to increase the im

pact of advertising. As the Media Kit explains: The next generation m

edia experience? You're lookin' at it. Each MTV platform

has distinct strengths. MTV 3600 exploits the best of each, then integrates them

to maxim

ize the impact of any program

ming event. O

ne event + three screens = limitless possibilities. W

h

[advertisers] are'. The idea of a 3600 strategy originates in military Inform

ation Operations, referring to com

pass-headings or 'azimuths' related to m

apping, navigation and targeting. It also refers to 'full-spectrum' intelligence and surveillance; know

ing all of the conditions of a given battle or 'operation'. 3600 also often refers to a full-imm

ersion virtual environment; 3600 battle sim

ulations are currently the cutting edge of training ground s

strikes (and the dream of the electronic gam

ing industry). The term recently also refers to governm

ent and corporate personnel evaluations, where em

ployees are evaluated through aggregated 'full-spectrum' surveys of all co-w

orkers rather than only imm

ediate superiors. In many w

ays, all such connotations of the term apply to M

TV. 3600 alludes as much to 'full spectrum

' targeting and emersion as it does feedback and evel

evaluation mechanism

s. Viacom Brand Solutions, form

ed in the same year as the 3600 initiative, 2001, is an institutional m

echanism (in Europe and the U

S) for utilizing their new m

ulti-platform targeting strategies to 'ensure clients achieve strong return[s] on investm

ent through all forms of m

arketing comm

unication'. An important part of their success, they explain, is their ability to 'understand and interpret the beh

of our viewers, in relation to TV and life in general' (viacom

brandsolution.co.uk; mtv-m

edia.com). But, M

TV's 3600 strategy also responds to competitive developm

ents in everyday life, namely the Internet, cyber-com

m

unities and other 'cyber-practices' Like in the workplace, the added m

achinery attached to leisure practices incre ase the amoun

of interconnected tasks possible at one time; they increase the relative 'productivity' of leisure. As Van To�

er, MTV/M

TV2/MTV Film

s President explains, we've found that this audience m

ulti-tasks

like no other. It's not unusual for them to be talking on the phone w

hile they're watching TV and u sin g their

computer to dow

nload music or IM

their friends. MTV 360 responds to our view

ers by giving them the choices they w

ant. (Hay 2001, 66)23 The acceleration and com

pression of soc

ial activity (measured in tim

e) in the so-called 'Netw

ork Society' is both a problem and op t

from the advertising m

essages rented on that aggregated social time, there are also relatively m

ore spaces to engage social attention by advertisers, there are more

platforms for industrial cultural production. Interactive program

ming eve

capitalize on this situation. The GM

of MTV, D

avid Cohn, explains 'It's all about casting a wider net. Control Freak has been a gratifying success, in term

s

of interactive TV. The show gets an average of 250,000

Web site visitors an hour. M

TV 360 is not the corporation's �rst foray into 'interactive' programm

ing. In 1995, MTV (U

S) produced a show calle

Yack Live, which included scrolling live com

ments from

audience emails as videos played. In 1997, the (U

S) network 'reinvented'

itself after several years of declining ratings with the unveiling of a huge studio in the m

iddle of New

York City’s

recently renovated Times Square. The studio w

as designed and structured for interactivity of

all sorts: huge window

s that allowed pedestrians to look in and perhaps get

caught on camera, �brotic infrastructure allow

ing

�exible interfacing w

ith audien ces across a variety of comm

unications platforms, and �exible outdoor and indoor cam

era

architech tecture allowing out- of-the-studio �lm

ing. These innovations on the landscape allowed for new

ent it entailed, and intensifying a strategic, if uneven, convergence of the m

eans of cultural expression. As the music in

dustry became inc reasingly inseparable from

music videos and M

TV's living room m

arketing platform, so too did H

ollywood. In the early 1980s, m

ovie soundtracks becam

e critical components of �

lm m

arketing, revolving around the marriage of popular m

usic artists/ teen idols with the visual dram

a of �lm clips and m

ini-movie trailers. As Gordon W

eaver of Paramount Pictu

res explains: That's because the original intent of these music videos is to prom

ote the movie, although there's spillover bene�t to the record w

hen the movie is played... [Param

ount Pictures distributes the clips to MTV and other television outlets, as well as locally to clubs.] W

e do this through our o�ces in New

York and ou r 43 advertising agencies around the country...I t's a god

send. The demographics are so perfect w

ith music video. Paramount's saucy pop classic, Flashdance (1983), broke �rst ground in this sort of production and distribut ion strat egy. After Paramou nt spent close to US $3 mill ion promoting Fl as hdance, Weaver expla ined: We incorik ids can comprehend that. better prenc, but further to distil such emotions, o

r in Raymond

enhanced viewing experience

ill rethink

Artist Statement

My objective was to use type to try to speak about an issue involving topics like society and technology. I decided to focus on how MTV has a huge impact on society. I found a couple articles on MTV and decided to transform my text into a picture of Snooki. I chose to not actually fill in all of Snooki’s face, I actually only wanted to make her hair, eyes, lips and dress. After finishing all of those features I looked over it and thought it might have been missing a little something so I decided to add a nose. I chose Snooki because she really gets a lot out of what MTV does and I think she really embodies what MTV is now. Snooki is well known even to those who do not watch the show she is in, also both MTV and herself gain a lot from Jersey Shore.