The Breakfast Table

Andy Dehnart, Wesley Morris, and Alex Pappademas

Wesley and Andy,

I had a minor panic attack last night when I remembered I was batting first this morning. I promised myself I’d spend Sunday reading newspapers so I could jump right in this morning with some well-honed pronouncements about the trade summit in Quebec City or the suicide bombings in Jerusalem. Instead I watched the Laker game and several uninterrupted hours of MTV.

I say that to say this: I find MTV’s new outdoor advertising campaign, which is all over Midtown Manhattan where I work, a little strange. Have you seen these ads? Slogans like “PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MTV,” “I’M ITCHY–DO I HAVE MTV?” “CAN I GET MTV FROM KISSING?” and “YOU CAN HAVE MTV AND NOT EVEN KNOW IT” printed in white type so large it obscures the photos behind it, which are of gender-ambiguous couples making out or, for some reason, a guy who could be Run from Run-DMC. First of all, is it really a prudent move, marketing-wise, to parrot the language of public service announcements about sexually transmitted diseases–not to mention the screaming display-head type design of vintage anti-AIDS campaigns–in a shelter ad for a cable network? (If this catches on, I look forward to ad copy like “THANKS TO A NEW REGIMEN OF ANTIBIOTICS, I CAN ENJOY A HEALTHY LIFE IN SPITE OF MY COMEDY CENTRAL” or “DON’T WORRY, BABY, THOSE C-SPANS ON MY GENITALS AREN’T CONTAGIOUS.”)

And in a larger sense, the way the ads wink knowingly at alarmist STD-related advertising seems somehow out of character for MTV these days. Kurt Loder’s perpetual sneer notwithstanding, they’ve kind of become an irony-free zone, dropping the knowing wink from their gestural repertoire. Maybe these ads (which seem designed to skew to a little older than the kids MTV’s been playing to of late, right down to the defiantly uncandyish color palette) are a prudent attempt at re-branding; I’ve heard that MTV’s programmers are a little apprehensive about the future these days. They’ve effectively transformed themselves into the Teen Pop Network, but teen pop as a genre isn’t selling as well as it was six months ago. Radio’s getting tired of playing it, and while the kids are still out there in Times Square screaming for this week’s Britney/’N Sync throne-usurper, they’re voting on Total Request Live but not voting with their allowances. There’s a huge audience that’s into the music but doesn’t buy the records, which is how disco died. It’s like it’s early 2000, and MTV’s got a portfolio full of tech stocks. They’re perched on the surface of the bubblegum bubble economy.

I’ll kick this over to you guys; I’m off to cop some more caffeine.

Alex