Keeping the young hooked

Media News

Mumbai, May 2, 2011

TV is obsessed with youth, hence the invention of reality TV and the current development of Social TV. I founded the Wit 15 years ago and since then I've watched all the new TV and web TV shows launched worldwide. Maybe even more so than any other industry, TV is obsessed with novelty, launching new products. Every month in our online database we enter approximately 600 new shows. Our subscribers, from broadcasters to producers and to advertisers, originating from dozens of countries, ask us every day: Which show is the new hit, which one is likely to be the next one? TV is obsessed with novelty and youth.

TV is innovating and progressing thanks to and for young viewers. TV broadcasters worldwide seem to be stimulated by young viewers' behaviors', also prompted by a major fear of young viewers lose interest in TV, watch it less and no longer watch it when they become adults. In the US over the past 30 years, the networks have gradually lost a lot of their viewers to cable TV because young Americans grew up watching Nickelodeon, then MTV and when they became adults they had a hard time finding network television on their remote controls.

With the phenomenon spreading to the rest of the world, broadcasters decided in the 1990s to stop teenagers and young adults from watching new channels or the developing internet. MTV invented reality TV with "The Real World", other channels across the world invented "Big Brother" and reality TV started spreading all over the world. In order to give young viewers what they seemed to be searching for and could no longer find on the small screen - the possibility to interact on TV, to identify themselves with people on TV, to feel like anything could happen. But right when young viewers seemed glued to their TV sets because of reality TV, new screens appeared to distract them from their TV sets. Via computers, smart phones,Facebook, Twitter, young people worldwide want more than before to interact, control, give new directions, and comment on what's on TV, everywhere and constantly. Consequently, TV is now seeking to invent the TV of the social networking era, the 'social TV', or connected TV that would adjust to the new simultaneous consumer modes of TV and the Internet.

In Europe in 2011, Endemol imagined the Zoom concept where people compete against each other to be the one that generates the biggest buzz or repercussions on social networks, race towards digital fame. In France, in March 2011, a variant around the idea, Club Vip, failed to attract impassioned viewers for the young ordinary contestants' race towards fame. Young people's liking for commenting and mocking TV programming via their social networks was not enough to support the TV audience and business model of a show created on this distanced approach. Because Internet viewing is not enough to finance or save a TV show via advertising. This is TV's dilemma today: in the Netherlands, the reality soap Secret Story, produced by Endemol, counts as many followers online as on TV. But financially it's not enough. Therefore, while waiting to find the next great idea that will entertain young viewers, TV content producers are giving the mike to young, so they can talk about their lives, tell their stories, become heroes of reality series, entertaining and/ or meaningful shows.

Anxious to reach a wider commercial target than the 15-24 year olds, and willing to attract young parents, TV seems preoccupied with giving life lessons to young adults. Teaching them how to leave the family nest, find a job, a life partner or start a family. Titles speak for themselves, Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents where parents watch their teens party; Working Girls on making a living without parents; Tool Academy, to learn living as a couple; Dad Camp to become a good father; Big Meets Bigger, to not gain too much weight and many other shows aimed to raise awareness about the dangers of sex, illegal drugs and alcohol. Another example of nightmare for a young, spoilt and out of control British teenager is to be sent to India for a week and forced to follow a local family's strict rules. This is what happened to one of the heroes in the British reality series World's Strictest Parents aired on the BBC. It is said that these teenagers recovered from the culture shock ready to change their ways, their minds enriched and their acting more mature. I hope that this exchange and encounter with the community of the "friends" of MTV India will teach us all a lot and bring us a lot of innovation.

For further information, please contact:

MTV

Arun Kumar

Email: arun.kumar@viacom18.com