MTV Gets It: Content for the Short Attention Span Generation

So Randy Kennedy at the NY Times wrote an amazing and well thought-out analysis of why MTV will not die (MTV turns 25 this year), but will adapt and transmogrify to survive perhaps another 25 years on the third screen.

I'm something of a freak and a modern-day wonder in that I have somehow made it to this ripe 30-something age without ever having a cable subscription. I was never addicted to and had to have"my MTV"...

I have, however, in the last year become a "video snacker" of MTV podcasts. I've been socially aware of my pop-culture surroundings for the last 25 years to know who Kurt Loder is. Without these MTV Podcasts tho' I'd never know who Sway is.

Here's some choice quotes from the NYT article to get you to read it:

"Short-Attention-Span-Theater Consumers in one test said that any show longer than three minutes was simply too long."

"Even now, in its infancy, mobile video is starting to make the very definition of television, as a place where people watch "shows" on "channels," sound pleasantly anachronistic, like a description from an old issue of Popular Mechanics."

"MTV's research seems to support Calloway's impressions, showing, for example, that more than 40 percent of the network's viewers use phones with text-messaging ability."

"People prognosticating about this world talk a lot about "video snacking," with all the implications for brevity and empty calories that the term suggests."

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End notes:

As I finish up posting this, Logan (age six) comes bouncing in to the house from Yoga with mom . He sees my iPod on the table, snags it, plugs in headphones and navigates to all the ESPN X-games content and starts watching it. He can barely read but he can navigate, access and enjoy content on my iPod. NOTE: He's sitting 6 feet away from a large TV that he could have had on in 2 seconds. He would rather watch the iPod.