OMG! MySpace and MTV do, like, politics
At first, it sounds a little bit like playing catch-up to the much-ballyhooed CNN-YouTube debates; on Thursday, Viacom's (VIAB) MTV and News Corp's (NWS) MySpace are scheduled to announce a series of one-on-one dialogues with each of the major Democratic …
Context & Ripple Effects
MySpace has spent 2007 pushing past its social-networking base into content: the March launch of MySpace News and the June feature overhaul aimed at YouTube both framed News Corp's property as an emerging media destination rather than a profile site. The political dialogue series with MTV extends that push into the highest-stakes programming category of the cycle.
The move is explicitly framed as catch-up to the CNN-YouTube debates, which set the template for pairing a TV brand with an internet platform to reach young voters. It lands two days after Viacom reshaped MTV's digital strategy on the music side — ending the URGE partnership with Microsoft and aligning with RealNetworks and Verizon on Rhapsody America — so the network is visibly repositioning its online identity on multiple fronts at once.
First-order effects
- Each major Democratic presidential candidate gets a one-on-one MTV-MySpace dialogue, giving campaigns direct access to the youth audience those two brands aggregate without a traditional news gatekeeper moderating.
- MTV and MySpace capture election-cycle relevance and traffic that would otherwise flow to the CNN-YouTube partnership, which defined the format they are now imitating.
Second-order effects
- Other networks already testing platform channels — NBC, CBS, ABC Family and MTV have all experimented with Twitter as a promotional channel since July — face pressure to deepen these partnerships from marketing stunts into actual programming.
- News organizations like CNN, which just relaunched its site with Web 2.0-style features in June, must keep partnering with social platforms to defend the debate franchise they pioneered.
Third-order effects
- If candidate-by-platform dialogues prove out, the 2008 campaign's youth outreach consolidates around social networks as campaign infrastructure, shifting leverage from broadcast networks that host debates to the platforms that own the audience relationship.
- For News Corp — reportedly close on its Dow Jones acquisition — MySpace's expansion into news-adjacent programming strengthens the argument that the company is building a full-spectrum media business rather than a networking site.
The trend: Social networks are being absorbed into campaign media infrastructure ahead of 2008, with TV brands partnering onto platforms rather than the reverse.