What Does “MTV” Stand for Anymore? A Look at Strategic
Planning of a Cable Network
Jess Gabl, Illinois State University
Introduction
MTV is a cable channel that has maintained popularity over decades by primarily targeting
teenagers and young adults. The channel originally revolved around airing music videos, but also
eventually found success with half-hour programs and arguably became one of the pioneers of
reality television. However, popularity among MTV’s target audience has decreased significantly
over the last few years, causing the brand to consider pursuing a new direction in programming.
This case will lay a foundation with a brief history of the channel, identify the new direction
MTV’s programming is attempting to steer, and offer critique, predictions, and suggestions for
the decisions that MTV is currently considering.
Values from Viacom
Originally founded in 1981 by Warner Cable, MTV, which stood for “music television,” was
created with the intent of being a specialized cable channel that would cover music videos,
concerts, and music-oriented programs. After a few ownership shifts and transformations, MTV
now finds itself being owned by Viacom, a major cable and broadcasting organization that also
has ownership of BET Networks, Comedy Central, Spike, TV Land, CMT, Logo, VH1, and
Nickelodeon. While it is difficult to find specific mission statements from MTV or its owner,
Viacom does emphasize its values in areas of entertainment, creativity, and innovativeness
(Viacom, 2015). They divide their programming into entertainment and music groups, which
further stresses the focus of the channels and programming they choose to be responsible for.
MTV’s Programming History and Current Dilemma
MTV stayed very true to its intended purpose for the first several years of running. From its
founding in 1981 until the airing of its first “gameshow” in 1987, the biggest programming shifts
and additions that took place were finding new ways to present and highlight new genres of
music and bands or artists (Petkovic, 2011). During this time, Michael Jackson also released
“Thriller,” which merged movie-making and songs to forever change the standards and
expectations of music videos. After a few short-lived half-hour programs in the late 80’s and
early 90’s, the next monumental show that MTV introduced was a reality show, The Real World,
in 1992. With technology allowing for consumers to find new ways to access music videos
without MTV, this show was a hit and began paving the way for reality television’s popularity.
However, by the mid 90’s, MTV was already being criticized for straying away from its musical
roots. To combat these criticisms, a spin-off channel, MTV2 was created to refocus on music
videos and coverage, and “MTV Live” began airing on the original station (Petkovic, 2011).
Despite this effort to acknowledge the drifting from its original entertainment purposes, the new
millennium flipped MTV programming on its head with a whirlwind of reality television.
In 2000, hit-show Jackass first aired, kicking off what would be the beginning of an ironic
nickname for the channel: RTV (reality television). Between 2000 and 2015, MTV premiered 98
new reality series, 26 celebrity series, and 35 competitive series (Anonymous, 2016). By 2016,
only 12 of these post-millennium-launched shows are still airing. Not surprisingly, this new
reality television focus came at the cost of music’s time on the channel. From 2000 to 2008, the
music programming dropped from eight hours a day to three hours a day, and in 2008 MTV
officially dropped “music television” from its name (Petkovic, 2011). Only one of the 13 music
programs that entered the year 2000 still air now, adding to an overall four programs in MTV’s
current lineup that still revolve around music (Anonymous, 2016).
While MTV held a prominent place in entertainment television for the decade or so that it was
popular, its reign has come to an end as it tries to continue this trend with an audience that is not
no longer as fascinated with this overly-saturated genre. To once again combat the shifting
interest of its target audience (12-24 year olds), MTV has made a few attempts at scripted
dramas over the past few years. In 2011, they aired Skins and Awkward (Anonymous, 2016),
which were realistic stories that revolved around life circumstances that teens and young adults
can relate to. The year 2011 also brought life to Teen Wolf, MTV’s first fantasy-themed scripted
program that blurred the lines between teen drama and science fiction, and in 2015 Scream, a
high school setting horror series, joined the lineup. Along with a couple of short-lived scripted
series, these shows have received mixed reviews and popularity, though Teen Wolf seems to have
been the most successful overall and is still being renewed for further seasons.
In 2016, MTV premiered The Shannara Chronicles, based on a book series and complete with
elves, demons, and other characters that have never graced its programming before. It is
speculated that this programming is in response to its dramatic drop in primetime viewers (about
40%) over the last five years, so MTV is trying to adjust its image and keep up with current
trends for its audience (Levine, 2015). Even more of an indicator that the company may be acting
with its back against a wall, an executive revealed that this is the most expensive series the
channel has ever produced (Levine, 2015). With new technologies and channels for
entertainment providing more competition than ever for scripted dramas, MTV is finding itself in
a dilemma of no longer having defining characteristics that sets it apart from other stations. If a
new direction in programming is committed to further, the brand may end up without a clear
identity and in need of a complete makeover.
Strategic Planning
Strategic planning as it applies to media is a decision making process that is implemented with
media objectives in mind and uses a variety of means to reach these goals. Broadly, strategic
planning assesses the communication environment and defines a target audience to come up with
goals, determines the specific steps that will achieve the goal, and then implements these steps.
During the creation of a strategic plan, an organization will consider which media to use, where
to allocate money and resources, the time frame for the plan, the frequency for messages, and an
audience to target. While there are many scenarios that may provoke a company to carry out a
strategic plan, the one that is most appropriate for this case is when a company creates a strategic
plan in response to a drop in sales. While MTV has not publicized the implementation of a new
strategic plan, and most organizations do not, one can still be inferred and interpreted.
Assessing the Communication Environment for The Shannara Chronicles
As such a large organization, MTV has likely noticed a problem in its viewership long before it
was available for public critique. In assessing a communication environment, a SWOT
(strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis can be done to identify “pros and cons.”
Internally, MTV’s strengths include its household name, consistent target audience over decades
of programming, and its current position to be loose with the direction of programming that it
wishes to pursue. “MTV” is a cable channel that is well-known by just about everyone,
regardless of watching it or not, which may help it have some strong initial credibility when
launching any new program. Being that they have been targeting teenagers and young adults
since the 80’s, viewers may also be able to anticipate more accurately the type of show The
Shannara Chronicles will likely be and hopefully formulate favorable expectations. Being open
to a change in programming may be both a strength and a weakness, since it does allow for some
creativity, but may also result in a loss of identity or threaten the strength of consistent
programming that has been produced. Further weaknesses may include not having the type of
writers in the company to come up with a likeable script for a new genre like this and whether or
not the cast ends up performing well and portraying the characters that the writers envision.
Externally, the basis of The Shannara Chronicles resulted from an opportunity: an old series of
novels. The popular culture trends are also currently obsessing over old-timey, fantasy-themed
entertainment, as seen by the success of Game of Thrones or Sleepy Hollow on other networks.
That is also the problem, though; the major threat to MTV’s new program is that there are other
channels that have been airing programming like this already for years and have developed a
strong audience and credible stake in this genre. While trending themes are presenting new
opportunities, the primary threat is that these opportunities have already been available and taken
advantage of by many other networks for many years now.
Defining a Target Audience and Setting Goals for the Show
It is likely that MTV is not trying to change the target audience that it has already been reaching
to for generations, but rather trying to bring viewers that currently fall into their target age range
(12-24) back to their network. This is the age range that typically indicates trends in popular
culture, so creating the style of programming that is currently popular would be an appropriate
way to bring these viewers back to their channel. More specifically, with a strong female
character in a lead role in a relatively graphic and high-budgeted fantasy show allows the
program to appeal to both men and women.
A technique that can be applied to set clear and concrete goals is the SMART (specific,
measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound) technique. While, as mentioned previously, this
type of information is not publicly disclosed, a specific goal MTV could be implementing here is
to launch The Shannara Chronicles this winter and regain some of their lost viewership. A more
long-term goal, based on the success of this show, may be to shift its primetime lineup into
focusing more on shows like this and Teen Wolf, as well as new programming that they will be
expected to produce in this genre (if they choose to make this a stronger and more established
shift). Measurement can include observing the channel’s ratings and viewership, the valence of
opinions about the show or the network being communicated through social media, or even the
programming ratings provided by online platforms like Rotten Tomatoes. If the goal is to regain
viewership, it is an attainable goal since they are trying to reach a level of popularity among
cable channels that they have achieved previously. While they may have to take into account
rising platforms for viewing their show, such as Netflix or OnDemand, MTV could still achieve
the volume and frequency of viewers that it has already reached in the past. The goal of wanting
to regain some loyal viewers seems relevant to the problem of losing viewers, but the relevancy
of a goal may be reviewed further if the problem was identified differently or if the ultimate goal
was different than simple viewership. Finally, an appropriate time boundary may revolve around
how the seasons are scheduled. For example, if the first season is set to run 10 episodes between
January and March, MTV may want that to be the time constraint on observing if they have
made progress toward their goal. However, if they wanted to allow for consumers to “binge
watch” the show once the season is over, the time constraint may be extended to see if popularity
increases once the second season begins later in the year. While shorter time boundaries are
preferred for strategic planning, they still must be chosen with careful thought and intent.
Implementation
When it came time to launch the series premiere of The Shannara Chronicles, MTV used a
couple of media strategies to ensure a better chance at success for the new show. While the
media-relevant strategic plan was acting when sales (or viewership) dropped, evident by MTV’s
drastic attempt to stay relevant as a station after analyzing a falling reputation compared to
competing cable channels, the implementation that was the most evident came prior to the
premiere and with the scheduling of the show with other programming. Prior to the first
episode’s release, executives spoke about the amount of money, time, and movie-quality effort
that was going into the making of this series, about a half of a year before it was aired. As the
premiere neared, more commercials and teasers were released, beginning to expose the basic
premise of the show and boasting some of its captivating visual scenes; these commercials were
played on the MTV cable channel, but they also saturated digital MTV platforms such as the
MTV website and mobile phone app. For the premiere, the first two episodes of the series were
shown together for one two-hour launch of the new show. Teen Wolf was also the lead-in
program which, as stated previously, has been a successful fantasy show on the channel, creating
a strong anchor for The Shannara Chronicles to piggy-back off of, as well clustering a similar
genre of programming together to attract and keep an audience that enjoys or prefers fantasy.
During The Shannara Chronicles’ premiere night, MTV received the most Twitter and social
media involvement of any non-sports networks (Wentz, 2016). Although Teen Wolf was the
overall contributor to this accomplishment, The Shannara Chronicles also earned 30,000 tweets
throughout the night, averaging to about 5 tweets per second (Wentz, 2016). However, the initial
viewing and overnight ratings of the show did not yield the success or popularity that MTV had
hoped, but all was not lost. Once the L+3 ratings (live plus three days of DVR and digital
viewing being accounted for) were analyzed, the show had reached about 7.5 million viewers,
making it the number two series on cable that Tuesday night, only behind Teen Wolf. This L+3
rating made history for MTV series premieres boasting the largest increase in viewing during the
three days following the debut and the most single-week success on iTunes (Wentz, 2016). It is
speculated that the largely positive valence of the tweets about The Shannara Chronicles were
what lead to the extremely important L+3 swing, due to the powerful influence of word-ofmouth messages.
Evaluation of the Results
With the first season of The Shannara Chronicles ending just a week ago, it is difficult to assume
yet if MTV has taken the final, important step of strategic planning to evaluate their successes
and shortcomings of the creation and launce of this new program. That being said, some opinions
and inferences can be offered based on what has been discussed so far about this case.
Overall, it does seem that MTV has achieved its goal of popularity with this new fantasy
television program; however, the extent to which MTV’s strategic planning is what
accomplished this goal is up for debate. Being as the initial premiere of The Shannara
Chronicles was not successful overall, with most of its viewing taking place in the days that
followed the debut after social media had some time to offer opinions and provide earned media,
it could be argued that social media achieved the show’s popularity, not MTV’s strategic
planning and promotion efforts. It is also important to remember that The Shannara Chronicles
is only one element of a much larger issue that MTV is facing as a brand and company to stay
relevant and profitable. It remains to be seen if the first season of The Shannara Chronicles will
be enough to keep an audience interested and excited for following seasons as Teen Wolf was
able to do. If, for sake of argument, both of these shows do continue to be the most successful
programs on MTV, the company then has to face the decision of whether or not they want to
continue this genre of programming and if this trend will cause further reconsideration of the
brand itself. For example, after years of transforming their programming, “ABC Family” has
been reborn as “Freeform,” comprising of teen and young-adult specific scripted drama shows.
MTV may have to start to seriously consider a new name or face of their company, while
“MTV” maybe spins off to its own channel that refocuses on music or continues to show the
reality shows that it pioneered. However, given the multiple spin-off channels and refocus of the
brand that have already taken place in recent years, the company will have to work diligently to
prove commitment to a new direction once one is chosen. These are all things executives at
MTV should be considering while they are currently in a realm of “ifs.”
The primary aspect of the strategic plan that MTV carried out when debuting The Shannara
Chronicles and should continue using for increased success was the purposeful scheduling of
their programs. Allowing a hit-series like Teen Wolf to lead into the program was wise, along
with providing a “bonus” two-episode premiere to allow viewers to get more involved in the
storyline during their first viewing. If both shows continue to be successful and air together, they
can create a “Tuesday night fantasy cluster” that may attract more fans of the genre to tune in to
be entertained for a couple hours at a time rather than just for one episode. Some improvement in
MTV’s strategic plan could be in the engagement with social media prior to and during future
seasons’ premieres, since earned social media proved to be especially important for the success
of this new show. Also, continuing to add budget and emphasis on the actual production of the
programs proves to be beneficial to help individual programs stand out in a popular, even
overrepresented, genre.
Conclusion
This case is significant for highlighting that media are not only channels for strategic planning
messages to transmit through, but they are also subject to their own organizational goals and
strategic planning. MTV is a cable channel that may be a strategically used outlet by other
companies to target specific audiences through advertisements, but MTV is also a company and
brand that faces its own challenges and undergoes just as much strategic planning and
management. This case also illuminated the importance of converged media. While MTV did a
lot of promotion through television for the new Shannara Chronicles series, it seems that they
missed strategic implementation of social media involvement, which still ended up earning the
show most of its views after the initial premiere. Had MTV been more involved with social
media prior to the debut of the new show, the initial premiere may have been even more
successful and there would be even more initial viewers gaining earned media for later viewers,
resulting in an even larger ripple effect. It seems that MTV was very involved with the initial
formulation of a new idea and creation of the programming itself, but lacked in any strategic
implementation of the new show and possible new genre direction. While much of this possible
brand overhaul is speculation based on MTV’s more successful programming and larger budget
being put into Teen Wolf and The Shannara Chronicles, it will remain to be seen whether this
trend in programming continues, if MTV will learn where to put their strategic dollars, and if the
channel overall will continue to transform away from its last couple decades of reality television.
References
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Levine, R. (2015). How MTV is trying to reinvent itself to combat sinking ratings and
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Petkovic, J. (2011). An MTV timeline: From VJs to Bevis and Butt-head to Snooki.
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