An Open Letter to
MTV, VH-1, and the Producers and Directors of the Televised Coverage of Live
8
You are reading the comments of one disappointed music lover and industry
colleague. Live 8, a great concept
for a terrific cause, had a lineup of the best live performers in the music
industry--the crème de la crème, no Pro-Tools mastering lip synchers
allowed. Yet you guys totally blew it with the coverage of the event.
MTV and VH-1,
you should be ashamed. Without a doubt, it was the most poorly-covered music
event I've ever seen in my 25-plus years of attending and watching live
events on TV. I felt truly sorry for music fans who'd gathered friends
around their big-screen TVs, ordered take-out, and cranked up the surround
sound to watch their favorite artists perform.
Cutting off the performers mid-song to put the focus on the VJs who had
nothing to contribute but inane chatter--especially when MTV and VH-1 have
precious little music programming to begin with--is no way to increase
viewership or keep those you have. We don't want to hear about who the VJs
just talked to backstage. We want to see the artist we can hear onstage
behind them! Yes, at times the VJs were reading a teleprompter to talk about
the event. It's important to get the message out there. But there are ways
to do it without interrupting the performances. Telethons have been doing it
for decades, and you've done it yourselves. (I won't even get into the fact
that you interrupted Brad Pitt's impassioned speech about the event's
cause.)
MTV and VH-1, take a clue from the original Live Aid, the
Lifebeat concerts MTV and VH-1 did 10
years ago, and the post-911 concerts. Those events let the performances
speak without interruption, allowing the artists to translate the emotion of
their performances into the emotion of the event and vice-versa. Who could
forget the poignant moments given to us post-911 by
Sting, or when
Bon Jovi's acoustic "Livin' On a
Prayer" comforted the families of firefighters and police? That's what music
should do in difficult times, so let 'em do it. Guys like Ken Ehrlich and
Pierre Cossette are masters at this.
If it's a matter of music licensing, figure it out. It's not rocket science.
Produce the event--in its entirety--as a Pay-Per View block of time like
adult movie channels do, and use the proceeds to finance the music licensing
and production costs. If it's not enough, sell T-shirts and DVDs of
exclusive rehearsal footage or have Wayne Isham or Bruce Sinofsky and Joe
Berlinger do a documentary DVD about the event with lots of behind-the
scenes footage. MTV pioneered the reality show, so how hard could it be?
But about AOL's coverage, you may ask? I did that. I had AOL's stream on for
most of the day, in fact. But a small computer screen makes the music lose
its impact. When I watched Madonna perform "Like a Prayer" on AOL with her
arm around a now-successful woman who was saved as a child by Live Aid
resources, it was a nice moment on my computer screen, but nothing special.
When I saw it on ABC's special later that night, it was an experience that
brought my friends and me to tears.
"This is the wave of the future," said one of my colleagues about AOL's
dominant coverage of the event. Yeah, well, I've been hearing that since
1993, and aside from less buffering, technology really hasn't made the
experience any better since. I want to hear every note with excellent sound
quality. I want to see the emotion in the artist's eyes as they sing. I even
want to see the sweat they've worked up onstage as they put everything they
have into making their song connect with the audience at the venue and the
cause connect with the audience at home.
...and I especially want to see the entire song!
Come on guys, we named Live 8 in our Cool Stuff column this month. As
purveyors of cool, MTV should provide coverage that lives up to the cool
factor of the event itself.
Randi J. Reed
Editor-in-Chief/Founder
MusicBizAdvice.com
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