Not exactly known as one to adhere to a strictly musical format, MTV has decided that investing heavily in the videogame market over the next two years is the next great idea. According to what MTV’s Chairman and Chief Executive Judy McGrath told Reuters, coming up with the cash is not a problem:
“As we take our brands narrow and deep to serve our targeted, niche audiences, we’re putting well over $500 million behind building our games business across all of the brands in our portfolio. I’d like to see more game applications on some of our current big brands across the music group.”
Trouble is, most view this as a risky move for media companies to make. So why does MTV feel so emboldened? They point to statistics from comScore Media Metrix that showed 42 million unique visitors in June alone, visited game-related sites owned by MTV Networks. According to MTV, about 47 percent of their patrons have played videogames, while only 27 percent of average web users have done the same.
Not sure how well this is going to work out for MTV, but I just wish they would go back their musical roots. Forget about Video Killed the Radio Star. How about Reality TV killed the video star, and turned a once great channel to shit. Oh… we took it narrow and deep all right. Did I mention that they do games too?
[Thanks to the zillions of people that sent this tip in]
