Music television is the endangered species of the pop world, and is learning the hard way that it must adapt to the Internet age, or die.
LONDON: Music television is the endangered species of the pop world, and is learning the hard way that it must adapt to the Internet age, or die. Britain’s Top of the Pops, the world’s longest running weekly music show, will be declared extinct on Sunday when it is broadcast for the last time on BBC.
Two days later MTV, one reason for the demise of Top of the Pops and at the cutting edge of music for so long, begins to reinvent itself with a new interactive TV channel and website that will target the online social networking craze.
Young, Internet-literate listeners are not prepared to wait for a weekly digest of chart acts, and the pre-selected programming of 24-hour music channels is also losing its appeal in an age where music choice is greater than ever.
Television must compete with Robbie Williams beaming live images from a concert to fans’ mobile phones and iPods playing downloaded tracks.
“I’m afraid to say that Top of the Pops won’t get that audience any more,” said Dylan White, director of Anglo Plugging which promotes bands to on TV, referring to people aged between 16 and 30. “They are downloading and getting their information far quicker and with a more focussed style than sitting there waiting for a programme to come around once a week on TV,” he said.
In Britain, people spend longer on the Internet than watching TV, according to a Google survey, and the audience for Top of the Pops has fallen to one million viewers compared with a peak of more than 15 million.
Meanwhile, MTV marks its 25th anniversary on August 1 with the launch of community-style website www.mtvflux.co.uk followed by a new channel called Flux, both of which aim to challenge leading social networking sites like MySpace and Bebo.
“If audiences are spending more time away from the TV it’s important for us to make sure we have a really compelling product,” said Angel Gambino, a vice president at MTV. Viewers of the new channel will be able to control what is aired and chat with each other live.
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