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October 13, 2004

MTV Still Sucking

There was a time when MTV was against censorship. The station even staged rallies to open channels of communication and expose people to ideas. Now, MTV acts more like a censor. Earlier, I blogged on MTV's refusal to show ads for Supersize Me! and the channel's refusal to show Adbusters spots. Now the channel won't show political and issue ads. The Washington Post reports:

Young people tend to watch a lot of MTV. Political activists tend to spend a lot of time trying to connect with young people. It would seem only natural that buying ads on MTV and its sister channels would be a great way to reach young people with a political message.
But there's a roadblock. On Viacom's MTV Networks, which owns MTV, VH1 and Comedy Central -- all popular with younger viewers -- no issue advocacy ads are allowed; some channels do allow advertising directly from candidates...

An official with MTV Networks said that public affairs issues are regularly raised through programming, but the company has a long-standing policy of turning down advocacy advertising.

No political advocacy. They don't want anything that would trouble a youth and perhaps stop her from grabbing that next Pepsi.

Posted by chris at October 13, 2004 07:52 AM

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