We welcome back Jacobs Media’s Dave Beasing for another guest spot:
So sang Jack White of The Raconteurs during MTV’s Video Music Awards, an apt revision of the lyrics of the first video ever played on MTV 25 years ago. This year’s good news/bad news scenario for the VMAs is that ratings were down again to just 5.77 million viewers, less than half what the show once garnered. Meanwhile, MTV’s broadband video site "Overdrive" reached its highest traffic ever – 3.9 million streams. Do the math: Online offerings got almost 2/3rds of the audience as the main channel version.
Of course, as sure as the VMAs will air each Fall, TV and music critics – some of us probably showing our age in the process – will write scathing reviews, lamenting what we remember as being that network’s golden years. In truth, some of the performances, jokes and sketches worked and some didn’t, just as when the VMAs were setting ratings records.
What’s really changed is popular music and pop culture. Very few of today’s "hits" have consensus appeal. Instead of simply being divided along Hip Hop, Rock and Pop lines, each genre has as many sub-divisions as it has individual fans. Young people we meet in our research still have favorite artists; they just don’t agree with their peers about many of them. They wonder aloud why every radio station and video channel – and music awards show – can’t sound as good as their own iPod.
No wonder they’d rather call up the Panic! at the Disco performance on-demand without first having to watch Beyonce – or vice versa. For years in radio, we’ve repositioned competitors with promos that say, "You don’t have to sit through THIS (undesired music) to get to THIS (a core artist or song)." Now radio, MTV and all other so-called "mass media" must contend with just that concept: Today, you don’t have to sit through anything you don’t want to get exactly what you do.
In the classic movie, Sunset Boulevard, someone who recognizes aging star Norma Desmond remarks, "You were big!" Her reply: "I am big. It’s the pictures that got small."
Hats off to MTV for taking their brand online, for investing in on-demand online "small chunk" versions of the VMAs. By doing so, MTV is still big. It’s the videos that have gotten small.
Jacobs Media has consistently walked the walk in the digital space, providing insights and guidance through its well-read national Techsurveys.
In 2008, jacapps was launched - a mobile apps company that has designed and built more than 1,300 apps for both the Apple and Android platforms. In 2013, the DASH Conference was created - a mashup of radio and automotive, designed to foster better understanding of the "connected car" and its impact.
Along with providing the creative and intellectual direction for the company, Fred consults many of Jacobs Media's commercial and public radio clients, in addition to media brands looking to thrive in the rapidly changing tech environment.
Fred was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2018.
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