Written by Liz Gannes
Posted Tuesday, February 12, 2008 at 5:40 PM PT

 

MTV Likes Hulu, Not YouTube

Om and I just got back from a long meeting with MTV Networks about their digital strategy. I did a video and he’s going to follow-up on the mother ship with a longer post, but there were a couple quotes about video hosts I thought I’d share now.

Van Toffler, president of MTV Networks’ Music & Logo Group, specifically asked us what we thought of Hulu, calling it “sleek and simple.” Will MTV content be showing up soon? “We’ve been talking to them since the beginning, and we like it a lot,” he said.

On the other hand, the MTV execs were much less friendly about YouTube, though they referenced the site in every chart of their slides about the future of social media. “Did you know we sued them?” joked Toffler.

“YouTube without us — what is there?” added Courtney Holt, executive vice president of digital music and media for MTV Networks’ Music & Logo Group. “Even without Viacom it’s still driven by professional content, it’s not cats chasing string.” That comment might not be popular with the YouTube crowd, who’d have things like Smosh’s 100-million-plus total views to prove their point.

“We’re really bullish on syndicating our content,” emphasized Holt — just not to YouTube.

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Topic: Networks & Studios

Comments (12)

  • Liz, your post gives me the feeling that MTV appeared to project that they owned Music videos. Ie, if its a music video, it must come from MTV.

    Can you comment on this?
    Am I just reading you wrong?

    Thanks,
    James

    James Gardiner — 6:35 PM on February 12, 2008 Reply

  • Are you going to put the video up on YouTube?

    Frank Sinton — 8:36 PM on February 12, 2008 Reply

  • Liz did they say anything about Joost or dont MTV ,a Viacom brand, care about Joost anymore ?

    (note to NewTeeVee readers Viacom are major investors in Joost )

    Matt_ — 8:49 PM on February 12, 2008 Reply

  • James, they did talk a lot about music videos, but we were talking also about their full-length shows. For music videos, they have access to an extensive library that they seem to be working on webifying.

    Liz Gannes, NewTeeVee — 9:23 PM on February 12, 2008 Reply

  • Matt, they didn’t say a ton about Joost. I actually might have been the only person who brought up Joost when I was talking about where I watch their content.

    Liz Gannes, NewTeeVee — 9:25 PM on February 12, 2008 Reply

  • What about community? Growing up watching MTV, you always felt like it is a lot more than just watching music videos. There were personalities and conversations around the videos that you couldn’t get anywhere else.

    Syndicating content everywhere is just step #1 and is New Media 101. Sites like MySpace, Imeem, and YouTube are so far ahead in terms of building communities around music. I know MTV/Vicaom has Flux, but did they elaborate more on how they are going to embrace communities in this new age of social media?

    Frank Sinton — 9:40 PM on February 12, 2008 Reply

  • Yup, that was actually MTV’s main point. I just chose these excerpts before I headed out to a meeting tonight. They are building communities and virtual worlds and all sorts of stuff around their shows. I would say they are actually a lot more scattershot than conservative about online communities — they seem to be giving everything and anything a try. And the page views on some of them are pretty impressive, e.g. iamonmtv.com and “next or not.”

    Liz Gannes, NewTeeVee — 9:45 PM on February 12, 2008 Reply

  • They can bad mouth YouTube, but I find that most of the content I find there is original. Hulu may have decent content, but you’ll never see random clips of skateboarders and cops clashing or even a lot of the independent content that focuses on more niche content like gamers.

    I get why they want to build Hulu up to be some kind of revolutionary thing, but they are still missing some pretty key aspects if you ask me. There’s no portability with the video, there’s forced ads, instead of using advertising to engage the audience and its restricted by geography. How can this really compete with the free for all that is YouTube. The majority of the content might not be great, but there is enough content and the search engines are good enough that I can find things that are really interesting to my interests.

    Even beyond, what Hulu will become, I’m annoyed by their whole beta “invite” system. I get that they want to give early adopters a sneak peak, but how many blog posts have they milked out of people by giving a few more invites to their exclusive little club. This may work for building up a bit of buzz, but after the fifth round of invites, it’s gets old to see gatekeepers still preventing the public from trying the site.

    Davis Freeberg — 11:00 PM on February 12, 2008 Reply

  • Hulu is a much better choice than YouTube for MTV. YouTube does original amateur content very well, but for professional content Hulu is a better fit. The forced ads are still short (though they do seem to be getting longer) and the selection is great and growing. Hulu is my primary source for tv shows in lieu of cable or satellite programming.

    justin — 7:32 AM on February 14, 2008 Reply

  • “YouTube without us — what is there?” added Courtney Holt, executive vice president of digital music and media for MTV Networks’ Music & Logo Group.”

    Is he smoking crack? MTV doesn’t own music videos. All they own is crappy content. Comedy Central, on the other hand, has some great content, but that alone is not the reason why Youtube is successful.

    Stu Bergendorf — 12:00 AM on February 19, 2008 Reply

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