{"id":24,"date":"2020-03-23T23:58:37","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T03:58:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/spring2020-mus235-03\/?page_id=24"},"modified":"2020-04-28T19:30:11","modified_gmt":"2020-04-28T23:30:11","slug":"use-of-mtv-strategies","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/spring2020-mus235-03\/about\/use-of-mtv-strategies\/","title":{"rendered":"CMT&#8217;s Incorporation of MTV Strategies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CMT quickly realized that they needed to rethink their approach to visual content in order to become more appealing to audiences beyond the \u201ctypical country music fan.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>First airing in 1981, two years prior to CMT, MTV was clear in their vision of differing and standing out from \u201ctraditional TV\u201d (Pittman, 1991). To create this new, fun, channel of counterculture, MTV used strategies of spectacle and extravagant videos, and the channel saw large success rates in correlation (Fenster, 1988).<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_129\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-129\" style=\"width: 685px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-129\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/spring2020-mus235-03\/files\/2020\/04\/video.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"685\" height=\"595\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-129\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Examples of the Extravagance of Early MTV Videos via Click Americana<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Since CMT did not begin until 1983, MTV had already gone through trial-and-error years and established themselves as a household name (Frith, 2005, 96; Tannenbaum and Marks, 2012, 117).<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_142\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-142\" style=\"width: 539px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-142\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/spring2020-mus235-03\/files\/2020\/04\/MTV.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"539\" height=\"655\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-142\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>MTV Subscriber Growth via Click Americana<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>). Therefore, CMT began to utilize strategies of MTV videos that had already proven successful to try to expand their viewership. Frith explains that \u201cthe aesthetics of country music videos are an attempt to adapt conventions established by and associated with rock and pop videos to the established conventions of country music\u201d (107). Country music videos attempted to create similar elements of MTV\u2019s extravagance by combining performance and visual narrative, differing from initial, more simplistic videos. A strategy central to MTV, 2002 Senior Vice President\/General Manager of CMT, Brian Philips, explains, \u201c\u2018We [CMT] are learning that the most surprising and unpredictable things we do get the biggest audiences\u2019\u201d (Larson, 2002).<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_131\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-131\" style=\"width: 682px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-131\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/spring2020-mus235-03\/files\/2020\/04\/Tractor.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"682\" height=\"542\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-131\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Snapshot from Kenny Chesney &#8220;She Thinks My Tractor&#8217;s Sexy&#8221; Music Video, 1999 via Kenny Chesney on YouTube<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CMT quickly realized that they needed to rethink their approach to visual content in order to become more appealing to audiences beyond the \u201ctypical country&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/spring2020-mus235-03\/about\/use-of-mtv-strategies\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">CMT&#8217;s Incorporation of MTV Strategies<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3424,"featured_media":0,"parent":11,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"coauthors":[117707],"class_list":["post-24","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/spring2020-mus235-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/spring2020-mus235-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/spring2020-mus235-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/spring2020-mus235-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3424"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/spring2020-mus235-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/spring2020-mus235-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/spring2020-mus235-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/spring2020-mus235-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/spring2020-mus235-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}