Though it might appear that shows like "Laguna Beach," "The Real World" and "The Hills" have defined young people better than any others, MTV is moving away from high-gloss and into homemade.
In an attempt to reconnect with young audiences that have drifted from the channel recently, MTV will begin to roll out series that showcase the best of the Web, require heavy viewer participation and feature the lives of real teens. While YouTube and MySpace made noise first by trafficking in do-it-yourself media, MTV will now put viewers in the driver's seat by serving teens the entertainment they crave most: the kind they create.
Internet pages about themselves. Video shorts they direct. Sliced and diced bits of movies and TV shows, re-cut into something new.
In an exclusive interview with The Times, Brian Graden, MTV Networks' music group entertainment president, unveiled a different direction for the channel in which MTV acts as the hub for multitasking teenagers.
MTV isn't the only outlet having trouble keeping the young demographic satisfied these days. Over the last year and a half, once-powerful teen magazines, including Teen People, YM, Teen and Elle Girl, have folded.
The key for MTV will be developing shows that will drive viewers to spend time on series-related online games, in Web communities or on cellphones coughing up jokes of the day.
"We can either stay in the mass business,," Graden said, "or we can be in the hyper-specialty business where the shows may not have broad appeal but in the Digital Age would better engage our viewers."
He said that the current series "Scarred" and "Human Giant" are examples of the new strategy. "User-generated content has to become reflected in our programming," Graden said. "Something like 'Scarred,' which tells the stories behind the Web's most gruesome clips of crashes, wipeouts and accidents, "is based on footage that may already be infamous, but it's our own narrative accompanying it."
Going forward, all shows will have a heavy digital component working in conjunction with the show. Casting for "The Real World," for example, will take place entirely online; "My Super Sweet 16," which chronicles extravagant birthday bashes, will soon feature home videos from MTV viewers that will account for "a significant portion of our on-air episodes," Graden said.
