Media M(.I.A.)TV
posted by on November 30 at 13:14 PM
I was watching MTV (let’s get this out of the way: Remember when they used to play videos?! wocka wocka) on Wednseday, because Kelly O is dead fucking wrong about the Tila Tequila show—it’s stoner-riffically hilarious!—and something weird happened. Every time the show cut to a commercial, there was M.I.A. performing one of her songs live, split-screen with ads for other, lesser MTV reality shows like the Real World China Special Economic Zone or whatever. At one point, a 30 second spot aired featuring M.I.A. talking about her personal style or something equally easy on the MTV audience, but there was no explanation for the weird M.I.A. commercial saturation—it wasn’t a promo for a live concert airing or anything as far as I could tell. Two things occured to me watching these spots lightly stoned:
1. Even as a 30-second clip, even with clips of Malibu Hills Sweet 16 or whatever playing over it, “Paper Planes” is fucking amazing.
2. Tila Tequila is the anti-M.I.A.—a creature of globalization, pop culture, and the digital age gone terribly, terribly wrong. Airing them interspersed with each other should’ve caused some kind of matter/anti-matter reaction and vanished Nick’s TV, but it didn’t.
Beck was right.
At it's core, MTV hasn't changed all that much. Even though they don't dedicate as much time to those little 3 minute recording artist advertisements, their programming is still literally 100% content free. Whether it's Reality TV or video call in shows, everything minute of every day on MTV is an advertisement.
I rarely see cable TV, but figuring out what pitch ties in the whose property might be the only thing fun about watching MTV. The M.I.A. inserts, which I didn't see, I guarantee you weren't random and were paid for by someone.
In related media discoveries, did you know that VBS.tv is paid for in full by Viacom/MTV?
Tila, bringing families "closer together" - even on Thanksgiving. Haaaa-WHAT?!
those artist blitzkriegs change about every week. they've featured aesop rock, chromeo, rilo kiley, alicia keys, kenna, etc in weeks past. it's a new(ish) campaign where they absolutely saturate every mtv ad and show credit with interviews, clips of live performances, et alia. it's nice to see some non-top 40 artists get some shine, but after watching a single show, i want to gouge my eyes out w the feature overload
Interesting Ari, I did not know that.
The MIA spots you saw are a part of MTV's "52 Bands in 52 Weeks" promotion. They highlight one artist or band per week and show short promos every hour for the entire week. Our own Minus the Bear was the first band featured a few weeks ago.
#5 - read about it HERE
#6 - Our own Minus the Bear was the first band featured a few weeks ago.
Wow, really!? Good for them!
Yes, cheers to Minus the Bear. I'd been watching on a friend's tivo up until this week, so I'd missed these spots previously. Still, wouldn't it be great if they just played videos of entire songs by these bands instead of using them as background music for their self-promotional ads? Get off my lawn!
It's nice to see MTV actually giving credit to those musicians rather than using their music in ads and programming without paying a dime or credit. I'm not sure why more people don't call bullshit MTV's shady licensing practices.
Comments Closed
In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 14 days old).