July 7, 2005 latimes.com : Business

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.

"Knowing what I know now, I probably would have made the decision to go
commercial-free," Toffler said.

Unfortunately for MTV, its performance also was juxtaposed with a
widely praised showing by AOL, which offered comprehensive coverage on
its music website, AOL Music.

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.

"This is a template for the future," he said. "Not to negate the
importance of television, but I really think the Internet generation
has come of age and the numbers have multiplied to a point of real
change?. AOL opened the door here and once it's open it ain't going to
close."

AOL bought the exclusive rights to the Live 8 shows for an undisclosed
amount and then licensed them to MTV, XM Satellite Radio and Premiere
Radio Networks. The shows also were carried across the globe by
regional networks.

Kevin Wall, executive producer of Live 8, said the combined television
and Internet audiences probably topped 1 billion and greatly amplified
the discussion of its cause: relieving debt and poverty in beleaguered
nations in Africa.

"MTV was a big part of it, not just on the air but in making the whole
thing happen," Wall said. "There were disagreements creatively on some
points, but you won't find anyone involved in this who has anything bad
to say about MTV."

That was not the case on the Internet, where irate viewers vented
loudly about MTV cameras leaving key moments such as the Pink Floyd
reunion. Critics weighed in too.

But Toffler said the channel was hemmed in by decisions made in the
four weeks leading up to the show, as the bill of performers was still
taking shape. In retrospect, he said, MTV should not have placed such a
high priority on showing so many acts, at the expense of airing
complete sets by key artists.

A combined average of 2.2 million total viewers watched from noon to 8
p.m. Saturday on MTV (1.4 million) and VH1 (762,000), according to
Nielsen Media Research.

Toffler said getting an estimated 18 million viewers to tune in for at
least six minutes of the broadcast was "a brilliant success" for MTV
and also for the "social cause."

Two hours of Live 8 moments also aired on ABC during prime time
Saturday and drew an average of 2.9 million viewers. ABC's concert was
the night's least-watched program on the major broadcast networks.

"It was a pretty horrible performance ? [but] it was on Saturday night,
which is a throwaway night for the broadcast networks," said Brad
Adgate of Horizon Media Inc.

As for AOL, its online broadcast of Live 8 was designed to promote a
major strategic shift for the world's biggest Internet service
provider.

As its number of subscribers declines, the Time Warner Inc. unit is
vying for a bigger piece of the $10 billion that advertisers spend
online annually by offering free of charge many of the services once
reserved for paying members. Video and music are key components of its
efforts.

Jim Bankoff, AOL's executive vice president of programming and
products, said more people watched this event than any other streamed
event on AOL, including the funeral of Pope John Paul II. Five million
unique users visited AOL Music for its free streaming video from the
concerts. At peak moments, the site was streaming 175,000 simultaneous
video broadcasts, which AOL said was an Internet record.

"It was a tipping point," Bankoff said. "It's the biggest step so far
and a pretty big leap forward."

Times staff writer Scott Collins contributed to this report.