News > MTV invites user-generated content
June 7, 2007
Written by: Josh Karp
Via:
What is it with big corporations dumping their advertising budgets in favor of soliciting free, fan generated commercial and dramatic content? Just joining this elite club of freeloading money-hags is MTV. The network has just announced plans to incorporate viewer-generated content into some of their popular short productions. Short Circuitz and Yo' Mama will be the first to get the open source treatment. Fans will be able to upload their special brand of humor, viral ad, sketch, or other video at a special web interface. In the case of Circuits MTV has promised to include web videos to the tune of 30% of their overall content. Wow. While I certainly appreciate the move towards a more democratically managed system, I think that these types of videos, for the most part, should be relegated to Youtube. There's very little space on professionally produced network television for amateur scripting and cinematography. But what do I know? This will surely prove to be popular beyond MTV's wildest dreams, so color me bitter and watch the fan-video money roll on in.
