LAT: MTV Stung by Live 8 Criticism (AOL "defining moment in online music")

[DeepModem Mom]

MTV Stung by Live 8 Criticism
By Geoff Boucher and Chris Gaither, Times Staff Writers


Bruised by harsh criticism and soft ratings, MTV executives Wednesday acknowledged missteps in their broadcast of last weekend's Live 8 concerts and hinted that they might retool the program and show it again.

Some kind of do-over is "not the craziest idea," said MTV Executive Vice President Van Toffler, who quipped that the Allman Brothers song "Whipping Post" best described his office's post-show morale.

Ratings released Wednesday show that the eight-hour live broadcast of Live 8 performances that aired Saturday on both MTV and sister station VH1 had an average viewership of only 2.2 million viewers — less than the average audience for the Saturday afternoon airing of the 1999 film "Toy Story 2" on the Disney Channel.

MTV's handling of the concerts — staged in London, Philadelphia and eight other cities — was faulted for frequent cutaways from key musical moments to go to commercials, offstage banter or less compelling performances elsewhere....

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Unfortunately for MTV, its performance also was juxtaposed with a widely praised showing by AOL, which offered comprehensive coverage on its music website....Ken Ehrlich, who produced the Live 8 show in Philadelphia and is a veteran producer of the Grammy Awards, said the AOL event would be remembered as a defining moment in online music consumerism....



http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mtv7jul07,0,7080053.story?coll=la-home-business